


the destiny of human handwriting

by cosmicocean, princessparadox



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, amanda and todd's parents are in here but fair warning they're dicks, the x-files is instrumental to a queer awakening and for once it is not due to dana scully, there's some light faranda in here but it's not enough of a side pairing that it gets the tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicocean/pseuds/cosmicocean, https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessparadox/pseuds/princessparadox
Summary: Even from a young age, he isn’t a romantic. It’s around third grade that kids start writing to their Match, eight year olds asking questions about their name, where they’re from, what they like, who they are. Todd doesn’t. He’s not really into the idea of Matches, even if it’s something he can’t change. People fall in love with people. If he falls in love, he’s not going to fall in love with someone who he knows only from ink on his arms that he didn’t put there.Whoever his Match is, however, does not feel the same way. His left arm (so he must be right handed) is covered with doodles. Crude flowers drawn with what looks like ballpoint pens, so lots of skipping and gaps in the lines. Sometimes the outlines of hearts that look like fountain pens, but are smudged quickly, the ink running too hard.Soulmate AU where anything you write on your arm appears visible on your soulmate's. Written for the Dirk Gently Big Bang 2017.





	the destiny of human handwriting

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [the destiny of human handwriting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12682398) by [akina4an](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akina4an/pseuds/akina4an)



Todd isn’t the kind of person to reply. He isn’t even the type of person to write in the first place.

Even from a young age, he isn’t a romantic. It’s around third grade that kids start writing to their Match, eight year olds asking questions about their name, where they’re from, what they like, who they are. Todd doesn’t. He’s not really into the idea of Matches, even if it’s something he can’t change. People fall in love with people. If he falls in love, he’s not going to fall in love with someone who he knows only from ink on his arms that he didn’t put there.

Whoever his Match is, however, does not feel the same way. His left arm (so he must be right handed) is covered with doodles. Crude flowers drawn with what looks like ballpoint pens, so lots of skipping and gaps in the lines. Sometimes the outlines of hearts that look like fountain pens, but are smudged quickly, the ink running too hard.

Sometimes, they write updates on their life, letters written with slightly more ease than the drawings.

_Found a missing cat._

_Mama made chocolate chip cookies._

_I went on a carousel today._

Todd can’t help but read all of the ones that he sees. It seems natural even if he doesn’t have any interest in having a Match. After all, they show up on his arm. If he sees them while he’s doing something, he might as well read it.

 

Todd’s parents aren’t Matched. Perhaps there’s supposed to be some big moment he finds this out, like the world is supposed to turn on it’s head and will never be the same because he discovers that two people who aren’t Matched are married.

But there’s not. Todd won’t ever remember when he learned about the two of them. Todd’s not sure whether or not they met before they’d met their Matches, or if they’d already known their Matches and fell in love with each other anyway. Or even if they’d met their Matches afterwards and decided they didn’t care. Whatever the case is, it doesn’t matter. It reinforces his conviction. People don’t fall in love with what’s written on their arm. People fall in love with people.

Observing from a distance, Todd can tell that they love each other very much, which is fitting, because when it comes to the relationship between him and his parents, everything is from a distance.

 

_Are you alive?_

The message appears on Todd’s arm when he’s about ten years old, outside on the patio that just barely juts out into the lawn, looking up at the night sky. He goes out there often, sitting down with a notebook and a pen to make notes with by the light of the back porch, even when it’s cloudy out (which tonight is not). The question is in a scrawlier fashion than it normally might be and gives Todd pause.

When your Match dies, the last thing that they sent you appears on your arm forever. You live with it, a permanent reminder of the tragedy that has occurred in your life. It’s another reason he doesn’t like anything about the concept of Matches. One doesn’t deserve to have a tattoo they can’t erase of what might have severely hurt them.

Todd, however, has never written to his Match. So they would have no way of knowing if he was gone or not, just a continuing uncertainty.

He chews his lip for a second, then sighs.

He might not like any of this, but he’s still not a jerk.

He takes his pen and writes as carefully as he can. It’s a little clumsy: he doesn’t have practice drawing on his skin. He grits his teeth and keeps at it, though.

_Yes._

He gets a response almost immediately.

_Then why don’t I hear from you?_

It feels vaguely like they’re challenging Todd on whether or not he’s _actually_ alive. Todd frowns a little.

_Because I don’t like to talk._ It comes a little easier this time, soon being able to write a little faster. It’s not a skill he intends on keeping. _I’m not going to do it again, I just wanted you to know I’m not dead. Bye._

Todd turns his attention from his arm, instead looking back up at the sky at Gemini twinkling at him.

 

One would think that this message might deter his Match from their own. 

Instead, he gets them with renewed vigor and enthusiasm, as if he’s encouraged them somehow.

Todd bears it.

 

Not long after Todd turns ten, just a few weeks after the first time he writes to his Match, his parents sit him down and explain that his mother’s having a baby. He listens as they tell him her stomach will get bigger and bigger until eventually she gives birth and he’ll have a new sibling. He listens attentively, as though he does not already have some understanding of how having a baby works. He acts excited for them because it seems like the path of least resistance, but really, most of his feelings are ones of confusion. Why on Earth are they having another kid, when they don’t seem to much like the one that they have?

 

Todd’s not sure what the last message he gets on his arm is. He thinks he probably sleeps through it. His Match keeps weirder hours than he does that probably means they’re from or living in a different country. All he knows that one day, he doesn’t get anything on his arm all day. Unusual, but nothing to think on that much. But then he doesn’t get anything the next day. And the next. And the next. Two weeks go by with nothing. He’d know if they were dead, but it’s still a bit worrying. He can’t remember a day without anything on his arm, maybe in his whole life. He isn’t exactly worried, but still just a little concerned. 

Should he do something about it? He could ask his parents, but they don’t know about the way he and his Match work. Whether or not you talk about your Match is a private thing, even if a lot of kids talk about it with his parents. He’d have to explain to his parents what was going on, and Todd isn't excited by the idea. They’d just give him those politely baffled looks they get when they don’t really want to put the effort into understanding what’s being told to them. Besides which, what could they do? Call the police to tell them that someone Todd has never met or really spoken to and doesn’t know the name of might be in trouble in an unknown place?

 

The conundrum occupies his attention until about three weeks later, when Amanda is born.

 

Todd sits in the waiting room by himself for perhaps half an hour after his sister is born, his father leaving to go talk with doctors and his mother. And see his new sibling, he supposes. He swings his legs over the edge of the chair, eating the granola bar and reading the _National Geographic: Kids!_ his father had left him with. It isn’t a space one, but there’s stuff about sea creatures, and they’re pretty cool, too.

His father comes to get him and leads him to the hospital room, where his mother is lying, a small bundle in her arms.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she says, one of the few times she’s called him sweetheart in her life. “Come meet your new sister.”

“Her name’s Amanda Jean,” his father tells Todd as he approaches his mother and the bundle. He peers over so he can see into it.

Todd’s heard a lot of stories from his friends about getting a baby sibling, everyone wanting to chip in with their two cents when they found out his mom was pregnant. Petey Berenson once said that it was the worst thing to happen to his life, and he’d known it from the minute he’d seen his baby brother, and how angry he was just looking at him, and how annoying he was and how he’d just like to stay in his room and not deal with him. So Todd’s a little wary.

The sight of this baby, though, doesn’t make him disgusted or angry. She looks like babies do on TV, although a little smaller, eyes still closed and bald. She reaches out blindly and ends up holding onto his finger. Todd’s chest constricts a little.

“Do you want to hold her?” Mom asks, looking exhausted and sweaty but smiling. 

Todd’s torn for a moment. He’d like to, yes, but it would mean that she’d have to let go of his finger. He makes a decision. “Yes, please.”

Mom transfers Amanda to him. Todd holds her and looks down at the tiny, kind of wrinkly thing in his arms. He remembers suddenly the book he snuck out of the adult section of the library recently, reading under blankets with a flashlight, and how it said that babies all looked small, blotchy, and kind of like Winston Churchill. He grins at her, wanting to laugh as he tries to cradle her head a little bit better. Dad sits next to Mom on the bed. 

It feels, Todd thinks, watching Amanda waggle her hands a little bit, like a family.

 

“Can you say ‘Julie’s Been Working For The Drug Squad’?” Todd asks, poking the baby on his lap. He probably shouldn’t be encouraging her to say that, but Amanda burbles happily, so it all kind of works out, as far as he’s concerned. “You’re right, that’s too long. What about ‘I Fought The Law’? Can you do that?” She makes vague consonant style sounds. “Yeah, that’s very punk of you, good. _Breaking rocks in the hot sun, I fought the law and the law won, I fought the law and the law won_.” He moves her hands a little in time to his singing and makes a face and a weird noise. She giggles and he laughs a little, too.

“She needs to eat, Todd, can I see her?” His mother breezes in, holding her arms out. Todd gives her Amanda and watches as his mother breezes out again to the kitchen. His parents have been fairly hands on with Amanda. Certainly more so than Todd can remember them being with him, but he wouldn’t have any memories of this time, so perhaps he’s wrong.

Sometimes Todd wonders if his parents had Amanda to try and start from scratch, have a kid they liked. They seem to treat her better than they do him, certainly. Sometimes it rankles, but the bitterness is almost never in Amanda’s direction, because if they were going to care more for one of them, he’d rather it was her.

 

Todd helps Amanda walk by holding her tiny hands and bending over to walk with her. Eventually she bats his hands away and toddles on her own, Mom and Dad filming the whole thing.

He also hears her first word while she strains for a toy just outside of her immediate reach.

“Give,” she demands of Todd, who drops the book he’s reading. He grins at her, and sensing a positive response, she starts chanting the word over and over again.

Todd is eleven years old, and trying to cry less.

His sister isn’t making it easy for him, though, and he does both times.

 

Watching _The X-Files_ is a bizarre experience for Todd and he can’t figure out why.

He loves the stories, drinks them in, watches them every night it’s on. He watches enraptured, having the total focus that is only just starting to come naturally to him, his twelve year old energy and general disarray starting to coalesce into something a little sharper. It’s the best show he’s ever seen.

But there’s something about this show that’s particularly strange. There’s been a lot of this kind of strangeness in his life when it comes to feelings towards other people that aren’t his family, from hanging out with the boys and the girls at school, or watching movies.

Todd likes puzzles sometimes, so he studies each new episode carefully, trying to figure out what exactly is going on. It feels like this show is the key.

He’s watching an episode with mutilated cows, resting his chin on his knees. Mulder and Scully are in an insane asylum, visiting someone who might have something to do with this week’s mystery. It’s lit poorly, and he can’t really see Mulder and Scully, but he knows what they look like and trusts that it hasn’t changed, faces bright and curious and beautiful.

And it’s that thought that stops Todd dead in his tracks.

Because he didn’t limit beautiful to Scully.

He applied it to _both_ of them.

He leans back against the couch heavily. What does this mean? He doesn’t know a lot about gay stuff, honestly, his parents never talk about that kind of thing (it is somehow clear, however, that they disapprove, just from observing them watching the news when something about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell comes on or something of the like). Is he gay? He can’t be gay, he likes girls too, and he can tell, now, in retrospect, all the strangeness of feeling, it was him feeling uncomfortable about the way he liked people. He knows what it’s like to _like_ someone, obviously, but he didn’t recognize it, not at the time.

So he can’t be gay. But he’s definitely not straight, either. Does that happen? Can you be that? Is he the only one? Oh god, what if there’s no one else who feels like this? Now that he’s thinking about it, he’s pretty sure he knows about this, actually, people like him, but what if his brain’s tricking him into thinking it, planting recollections that don’t exist? What if it’s just him, only him in the entire world that feels like this? What if people hate him for being a freak? People _will_ hate him, they’ll _definitely_ hate him.

Todd can’t tell anybody. Todd has to tell somebody.

He stays on the couch for a moment, before making a decision, scrambling to his feet.

He tiptoes into Amanda’s room and looks over into her crib, hands just barely touching the side facing him. She’s asleep, the tips of her ears poking out of her hair a little. He swallows and leans over a little.

“Hi,” he whispers. “I’m not straight. I’m not gay, either, I’m just… something. And I needed to tell someone, and I obviously can’t tell our parents, and I just…” he trails off, not actually sure of what he wants to say. “I’d like to tell you when you’re older. And I really, really hope you won’t hate me for it if you do.”

The door opens and Todd looks behind him. His father stands in the doorway, looking a little bleary-eyed. “Todd? What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Dad. I just wanted to check on Amanda before I went to bed.”

“Oh.” His father makes an absent waving gesture. “Make sure you turn off the lights in the hallway before you go to sleep.” He stumbles away, presumably back to bed. 

Todd turns back to Amanda and carefully bends enough so he can kiss the side of her head. “I love you,” he whispers. “And I hope you never hate me.”

He slips out of the room, closing the door on the way out.

 

Todd’s reading with his lamp on when suddenly, his arm feels weird, that odd sensation of being aware something is physically different even if he can’t actually feel what has caused the change. It’s one that he hasn’t experienced in so long that he doesn’t recognize it at first, gets as far as acknowledging that something is different before realizing what it is. He drops his book and turns his arm.

The writing is shakier than it was that time his own arm asked if he was alive, a little bigger and more jagged in places. It’s a ballpoint from what he could tell, not with lightly faded ink like the kind that used to make it’s way across his skin but with stark blackness, bold and new.

_I don’t want to do this anymore._

Todd doesn’t like this system and he has no frame of reference for what _this_ could mean. But it’s been three years of a complete communication shutdown from someone who had sent multiple messages every day, to the point of it being annoying, and then suddenly there’s this particular sentence.

He grabs a pen from the holder on his nightstand and does his best to write it out.

_You can do it._

He waits five minutes before he gets an answer, a bit steadier and smaller this time.

_Thank you._

He swallows. _You’re welcome._

Todd stays awake as long as he can, falling asleep sitting up, because he keeps staring at his arm. As far as he’s aware, he doesn’t get any further messages.

 

Todd checks his arm every day for two weeks until he accepts that he’s not going to receive anything else. At least his arm hasn’t frozen with two words on it, the sprawl wide and fear ringing in every letter. He doesn’t want anyone dead.

 

“Todd.”

Amanda says his name in a lot of different ways. Usually as a question. There’s a lot Amanda doesn’t know yet, but she doesn’t intend anyone to stop her from learning. Sometimes, however, it’s like this one, an imperious summons demanding Todd stop whatever he’s doing and come pay attention to what she wants, and sometimes he does.

Today is not one of those days, though, because it is within the first two months of his first year of high school, and trigonometry is a bitch.

“I can’t right now, Amanda.”

“ _Toooooooooodd._ ”

“I said not right now.”

“But I have a _question._ ”

“Go ask Mom and Dad.” His pencil scratches and he glares at his homework, leaning his elbow on the dining room table.

“I _can’t._ ”

“Yes, you-“ he pauses. Both his parents are still at work. “Is it urgent?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you really need me right now?”

“Yes.”

Todd doesn’t believe her, and is about to tell her so, when she speaks before he can.

“It’s about Papa.”

Todd finally looks at her. She’s sitting on the living room floor, looking at him with big brown eyes, face impatient.

“What about Papa?” he asks, a little cautiously.

Amanda hasn’t nailed rolling her eyes yet (a move she’d learned from watching Todd), still kind of rolling her entire head to do it. He gets the idea, though, especially when she waves him over with the pudgy hand naturally leant to four year olds. “Come _here.”_

He considers it, pushing his hair out of his face. On the one hand, it’s probably not an emergency, and if he does this she’s just going to use it to get him to do more stuff for her in the future. On the other, he’s pretty sure he knows what this is about.

Todd sighs and sits across from his sister, crossing his legs. She promptly crawls into his lap, tugging on the Black Flag shirt he’s wearing. Amanda seems to often be of the opinion that he’s her own personal jungle gym.

“I can’t see you if you’re sitting there, Amanda.”

She makes a frustrated noise but leans back and lands on the floor with a _whump_ before scooting back so she can look up at him.

“So what’s going on?”

She fists her hands in her own shirt instead of his. “Why does Papa drop things?”

Todd’s stomach drops a little. He’d really hoped his parents would have had this conversation with her by now. “Lots of people drop things,” he answers, just so he can make sure. “You drop stuff, too.”

“ _Nooooo._ ” She’s fixing him with that look she gives when she thinks people are being stupid, one he hadn’t entirely expected to see from her at four but one he’s getting nonetheless. “Why does Papa drop stuff and _then_ run away?”

Great _._ Todd takes a deep breath while he thinks it over.

“Papa’s sick,” he says slowly. “And sometimes it means he drops things, and he doesn’t want anyone to see he’s sick, so he leaves the room until he feels better.”

“ _You_ get sick and you don’t go away. You just get gross.”

“It’s not sick like that, that’s just a cold. Papa’s sick always.” Amanda’s eyes widen and Todd knows he’s made a misstep. “He’s okay,” he adds quickly. “He’s okay and he’s gonna be okay. He’s just sick, too.”

“You get better.”

“Sometimes you don’t.”

Amanda purses her lips. “If he’s sick always, then why does he leave?”

“Sometimes he feels a little more sick.”

“So he gets grosser than you?”

“Not really.” Just because he could spell “pararibulitis” by the age of ten doesn’t mean he wants Amanda to learn any time soon. “The way Papa’s sick, you can’t see it. You can’t hear it or smell it. But he can. Sometimes he sees himself holding a knife, but the knife isn’t there. He just _thinks_ it is.”

“But if he thinks it’s there, isn’t it there?”

Todd’s not about to engage in philosophical debate with a four year old, especially when he’s not sure who will win. “Not like this.”

“And it hurts?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

Amanda looks like she’s going to start crying, so this time he holds out his arms and lets her climb in, hugging her.

“I don’t want Papa to hurt.”

“I know, Amanda. I’m sorry.”

“We can’t help?”

“If we don’t talk to him about it, we’re helping him.” His father pretends not to have it and it’s neither of their businesses if that the way he wants to do it.

“You promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“Okay.”

Todd’s Trig homework is late the next day. He doesn’t even complain about Amanda getting his favorite shirt all wet.

 

Todd’s hand is hovering over the pen on his nightstand, frozen from where he had been about to write the note on his arm.

In the two years since he’d heard from his Match, he’d started keeping notes on his own skin. Some of them are just class times, some of them are the beginnings of what he thinks might be song lyrics, the ones that turn around and around in his skull like a railroad track at various volumes and demand to be known. He’d groggily reached for one when he woke up this morning, so he could remind himself to do the homework for Tilton during lunch so he could hand it in seventh period, when he’d glanced at his arm.

_You know, those lawn chairs are very yellow._

Todd’s definitely been staring for two minutes. He’s not sure he’s blinked in one.

His anger’s starting to wear off, his usual silence the only thing that’s kept him from furiously scribbling _you asshole, I thought you were in hurt or in trouble_ at this very casual, blithe message. It’s not his business. Part of the point of his feelings about this whole thing is that it’s not his business. Now he’s hesitating because he doesn’t know if his system changes now. If he goes back to no longer writing notes on his arm or not. 

In the end, Todd decides, it doesn’t matter. He scribbles the note about Tilton’s class on his arm and gets out of bed.

 

Todd can see what’s going on between his sister and his parents, feel it in his bones like a terrible deja vu.

Amanda’s almost seven now. At her age, Todd had been melancholy and irritable, not particularly given over to smiling. Amanda, however, is a wild child, and he can already see his parents turning away from her the way they did from him. He can see her hurt, too, and her confusion. 

So, on a Friday afternoon where his parents are going to be late thanks to separate work events anyway, Todd pokes his head into Amanda’s room. She’s rubbing green crayon all over her Barbie’s hair, her tiny pink clothes having already encountered the black one.

“Hey,” he says. “Wanna hang out?”

Amanda shrugs moodily, underneath her fingernails entirely bright emerald.

“We can eat and watch TV from my bed.”

This gives Amanda pause, her head slowly rising to look from the wax/doll hair amalgam. “Eat _in_ the bed?”

Eating in their beds goes against one of their parents’ big rules. “Yeah.”

Amanda puts the crayon and the Barbie down. “Okay.”

They watch cartoons on the TV in Todd’s room for a little bit, Amanda munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Eventually, she puts her plate on his floor and settles in, pulling a blanket up over herself.

“Hey,” he starts. “You can tell me stuff, if you want.”

“I tell you stuff all the time.” She adjusts her pillow slightly. “Did I tell you I saw a puppy yesterday?”

“You did, but I didn’t mean that kind of stuff.”

“Did I tell you about the cat?”

“I meant stuff you don’t want to tell Mom and Dad.”

She stops and stares up at him, her little face suddenly shifting in a way that seems to take away all her exuberance. 

“Did I do something to make them hate me?” she asks in a small voice.

“They don’t hate you. They’re just…” he thinks about it. He comes up empty on the right way to say _bad at loving us_ and takes a stab in the dark. “Tricky.”

“Oh.”

“But them being tricky is their fault and not ours. So don’t let them make you feel bad about it. And you can tell me whatever you want, especially if you don’t want to tell them.” Todd doesn’t know if things are ever going to be easier for his parents and Amanda. If Amanda will mellow out in a way that he didn’t, become absolutely shy and quiet to the point where her brashness here will become curious. Maybe it’ll be enough for their mother and father, and they’ll be happy to embrace the daughter that’s a little closer to what they’d envisioned when they had kids.

But even if she does, it’s not her job to change into someone their parents should love regardless. She shouldn’t think she’s supposed to feel bad for acting loud and angry, like a kid, because their parents only want perpetually well behaved children like the mental image they’d had. He doesn’t want her to grow up feeling adrift and kind of alone like he had. And he _especially_ doesn’t want her to keep something to herself that will get her in trouble someday because she feels she has no one to turn to.

Amanda curls up into his side. “Thanks,” she mumbles, sounding like she’s starting to doze off a little. Todd switches to classic _Tom & Jerry_ cartoons.

“Any time.”

 

“What’s your Match like?” Amanda asks when Todd’s working on his college essay. She doesn’t know better than to ask people questions about their Matches yet, as evidenced by the fact he’s heard her ask two teachers, their milkman, and a bird in the past three days.

“Talkative,” he answers absently, feeling the Match scribble something else across his arm. Todd knows it’s a sign of how tired he is that it took him four tries to spell “planetarium” right. He shakes his head, trying not to let his Match distract him.

 

“Why do you keep using this song to practice?” Amanda asks while Todd corrects her fingers against the guitar.

“Because I like this song.” He rolls the sleeves of his plaid shirt a little bit while Amanda awkwardly strums. “It’s a good song.”

“The lyrics don’t make sense.” She moves the guitar a little so it’s more comfortable. “What’s a memoria?”

“It means memory.”

“Then why doesn’t he just _say_ memory? And why does he keep _saying_ memoria?”  
“Because he was a lyrical genius.”

Amanda rolls her eyes, but keeps playing.

 

Todd was never really into climbing trees as a kid, so he didn’t have much to do with the one in their backyard. Not even as a purpose to get a better view of the sky- it was always obstructed by leaves. Amanda loves it, though, so Todd knows when he can’t find her that night, all he has to do is head out to the backyard and look up.

“Can you even climb trees?” Amanda asks, her feet dangling as Todd does his best to scale it.

“Yes,” he huffs. “Shut up.”

Amanda doesn’t smile as wide as she normally would, but there’s still traces of one there. “Cause it doesn’t look like you’re very good at it.”

“I can _do_ it.”

He manages to swing over until he’s sitting next to her on her branch.

“That looked like it hurt.”

“You could have discovered how to be a jerk later, you know. I’d have been okay with that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Her smile trails away and she looks up at the moon. 

“Congratulations,” she says quietly.

“You don’t have to say that if you don’t want to.”

She kicks her legs out a little. “New York’s far away.”

“I know.” That had been part of the point. For a little while, at least, he wants to be as far away from Washington as possible, shake off the feeling close to suffocation he gets from walking the same streets he has his entire life. Cornell is far away, and he won’t know anyone there. There’s a certain exhilaration to that.

It’s tamped down, slightly, by how his sister keeps looking away from him because she doesn’t want him to notice that she’s upset.

“You can call me every day if you want,” Todd tells her. Amanda glances up at him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, sometimes I’m gonna have homework and classes and stuff, but that’s true here, too. So I’ll try and talk to you whenever you call.”

Amanda swallows. “Okay.”

“And I’ll come back for Christmas.”

She nods. “I’m gonna miss you,” she whispers.

Todd puts an arm around her shoulders and she shuffles a little closer so she can lean against him. “Yeah. I’ll miss you, too.”

 

Amanda doesn’t come with them to get Todd set up in his dorm room, to save money, and the flight leaves early in the morning. So the night before they fly out, Todd kneels down and hugs Amanda for a long time, lets her cling to him and bury her face in his shoulder. He runs a hand up and down her back while she cries.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispers. “I promise.”

“I know,” she mumbles, pulling away and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “I just got used to you, is all.”

Todd grins. “I know.”

 

Todd grew up in a town not far outside of Seattle. He’d gone to school with a lot of kids, some he liked and some he didn’t. He knows what large places look like.

Cornell feels different, though. Cornell feels _massive_ , in a way home never did. There are people here who like the music he likes, the movies, the clothes. There are people here who like none of those things. He’s on his own away from everything he’s ever known, and it’s _staggering_ and _beautiful_ and he _loves_ it.

Some nights he just wanders around the campus, feeling the ground beneath his feet, how somehow the air feels different than it does at him, and he smiles.

 

Amanda calls him every other day and tells him about school and her television shows and the music she’s listening to. He answers the phone each time, listens to her stories with a smile. His sister is the only thing he misses about Washington.

 

Todd’s at a party hosted by a guy he barely knows halfway through the first semester. He does that a lot. He’s sitting alone on a couch with some beer. It’s very easy to get alcohol here if you’re underage. Often twenty-one and up students will buy it for them.

A girl flops down next to him. She’s black and a little chubby with bright pink hair in dreadlocks, wearing an _American Gods_ shirt and ratty jeans. Todd recognizes her face. She sits up front in his English 101 class.

“Hi!” she says brightly. “I’m Jodi!”

Todd’s a little startled. He’s not very good at making friends. He’s too awkward and sarcastic, so people don’t tend to talk to him for very long. “Um. Hey.”

“I like your band shirts.”

Todd adjusts his Joan Jett shirt. “Thanks.”

“We should talk music.”

He brightens a little. “What are your feelings on punk?”

She grins. “Positive ones.”

They talk bands for a little bit. Todd’s feeling a little happier, tentatively ready to like her. Jamie Winters walks in. He’s tall and skinny, wandering around in a David Bowie shirt. Todd tries to subtly watch him, like he does every time he’s around.

“You’re not very good at that,” Jodi tells him cheerfully. He tears his eyes away from Jamie and looks at her.

“Good at what?”

“Checking him out.”

Todd flushes, stomach churning. “I, I don’t, no, I, I wasn’t checking him out, I don’t, I, uh, I don’t do that.”

Jodi watches him thoughtfully for a moment, leaning back against the couch. “You know what?”

“Wha, what?”

“I’m a lesbian.”

Todd’s a little floored. If there were any gay kids in his high school, nobody was out. He can’t remember but he thinks she might be the first gay person he’s ever met. “Really?”

“Yup. _Flamingly_ homosexual. I don’t seem to be able to have a girlfriend that sticks, but I’m still super gay.” She stretches out her legs. “And I grew up in a really conservative town. Like, _super_ conservative. Being a black girl in that town is ridiculous, but being a black gay girl there? I was never out. Couldn’t do it. But then I got here, and in the first three weeks, I came out. I felt comfortable.” She lolls her head in his direction. “I met people who were like me. They kept an eye out for me because I was nervous about coming out. I had people who was willing to guide me, and befriend me. And I resolved that someday, I would be that person for someone else.”

Todd stares at her. He swallows. His stomach is full of butterflies. His mouth feels suddenly dry. “I…” he’s never said it aloud before. “I like girls. But I also like boys. And I didn’t know… I didn’t know for a while if there was anyone else like me, and then I found out there were, and that made it a little easier, but I knew if I told my parents, they would ask me if I couldn’t always choose girls, if I couldn’t just ignore the part of me that liked boys, and I just-” he’s babbling. “I’m bisexual. That’s that.”

“Your family sucks, too?”

“My sister’s the most important thing in my life and I’d take a bullet for her.” Todd would say he doesn’t know why he’s talking to this girl so extensively about the private parts of his life, but he hasn’t had anyone take an interest in his life maybe ever, and he _wants_ to talk, he wants to _so bad_ , wants to spill everything he keeps inside so tight. “My parents are… not that. They want this, uh, this perfect little family. 2.5 kids, house in the suburbs, well behaved children with good grades, and I’m not. And my sister’s not. And they can’t connect with us or get us because we don’t fit this perfect image they have, they _love_ us but in this really distant, detached way. They don’t care about us. Remotely. So I’ve got my sister, cause they’re gonna raise her the way they raised me, and I won’t let her be on her own for it.”

Todd feels a little breathless, and stupid. 

“You’re a hell of a talker, aren’t you?”

“Not usually. I just… never have anyone to talk to. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, my parents are terrible, too.” She holds out a hand. “Shitty parents high five?”

Todd smiles and high fives her. Afterwards, they sit in companionable silence for a minute.

“I didn’t try to force you into coming out,” she says suddenly. “That wasn't my intention. I didn’t mean to pressure you.”

“I didn’t feel pressured.”

“I just. I know what a scared gay person looks like. And I wanted to help.”

“I get it. Thank you.”

She grins at Todd. “Hey, do you play an instrument?”

“Guitar.”

“I play drums. You wanna jam sometime?”

“ _Absolutely._ ”

 

Jodi is good at the drums. Todd’s fingers fly across the guitar strings. Sometimes, he tentatively tells her about boys he thinks are hot or cute.

“Flirt with them,” she tells him. Todd always shrugs and mumbles an excuse. “Seriously. Get laid. That’s what college is for.”

He grins. “Isn’t it for learning?”

She makes a dismissive noise. “I mean, yeah, sure, I guess.”

Todd laughs. He feels at home around her.

 

When Todd goes home for winter break, he and Jodi talk on the phone every day.

“How’s your young lady?” his father asks. It’s a perfunctory question. Sons are to find girlfriends and the father is to question after it. Todd doubts his father really gives a shit.

“She’s not my girlfriend, you know.”

“Of course, of course.” He pats Todd on the arm, just as patronizing as his voice.

 

“Are you really not dating her?” Amanda asks. Todd swallows. She’s too young, only nine. He can’t tell her. She dislikes their parents too, doesn’t tend to talk in front of them about anything that matters, but she could slip up. He can’t picture the blowout that would happen, the demands, the pleading, the “have you tried _not_ being bisexual?”. He doesn’t want to deal with that.

“No,” he answers. “She’s just my best friend.”

“Okay, cool.” She goes back to reading her book.

 

When he comes back for the winter semester, Todd and Jodi regularly play together. It’s therapeutic for Todd in a way. This is something he’s good at, something he knows how to do. He’s perfectly in control of things in that moment.

“You know we’ve been labeled the weirdos who like to play loud punk songs, right?” Todd asks her once.

Jodi shrugs. “Best label we could’ve gotten.”

 

“What class is this for?” Jodi asks, squinting over Todd’s shoulder at the homework he’s doing.

“Astronomy 1101,” he answers distantly. “From New Worlds to Black Holes.”

“I understand literally none of this shit you’re studying.”

Todd grins at her. “It’s because I’m smarter than you,” he says sweetly. She thwacks him with her Architecture textbook. He laughs.

 

One night, near the end of the second semester, when everyone’s frazzled about finals, there’s one night Todd goes to a party thrown to blow off steam and gets a little tipsy to take his mind off them. He starts chatting with a boy named Katashi. He has blue streaks in his black hair and he listens attentively to Todd ramble, slurring his words slightly, about black holes. His eyes are so pretty and his lips are pink. When he puts his hand on Todd’s thigh, he doesn’t even come close to freaking out. He’s going to put that down to the alcohol, but he’ll take it. He tells Todd he’ll walk him back to his room. Todd’s skin is tingling, feeling electric, and he agrees.

“Is-“ Katashi pauses, also kind of drunk, clearly trying to marshal his thoughts. “Is your roommate here?”

Todd shakes his head. “His flight left the day of most of his exams. He did them early and went home.”

“Huh. Intere-“ he stumbles over the word a little. “Interesting.”

“Mmm,” Todd answers noncommittally, hopeful about the way this might go but not sure.

“I feel like I should tell you,” Katashi mumbles, swaying close to him as Todd fumbles

with his key. “That I just got out of a relationship and don’t really want to enter a new one. And I probably should have said that earlier.”

“Don’t worry about neither. Either. I’m new to this whole-“ He waves a hand vaguely. “Being okay with this thing… thing.”

Katashi smiles. It’s just as pretty as his eyes. Todd’s a sappy drunk. “Everything works out then, doesn’t it?”

Todd doesn’t answer, instead bringing Katashi’s lips crashing to his. After a moment of surprise, his hands go to Todd’s hips.

It only occurs to him about three minutes later that his dorm has a bed.

It’s a pleasant thought.

 

The next morning they’re both a little hungover, but other than that, it isn’t actually that unpleasant or awkward. Todd assumes this is because they set the boundaries clearly last night, or as clearly as they could drunk. They get dressed and say their goodbyes. Katashi goes (presumably: Todd doesn’t ask him, not wanting to interfere in his business) back to his dorm, and Todd runs up the stairs. His dorm is co-ed, and Jodi’s floor is the one above him. He pounds on her door. He’s not worried about waking her roommate Sandra, who he knows had a study group meeting at ten, and it is now ten-thirty.

“M’coming! Lemme find pants!” A minute or so passes, and then Jodi opens the door blearily. “What d’you want, kid?”

“I’m two months older than you.”

She waves her hand dismissively. “What’s going on?”

Todd bounces on his heels. “I have something that’s probably TMI but I _have_ to fucking tell you cause there’s no one else I can tell.”

She squints at him, then motions him inside. She staggers over to a Bunsen Burner with a coffeepot on it. “You want some coffee? You look hungover.”

“You’re… probably not supposed to have that in the dorm, Jodi.”

“ _You’re probably not supposed to have that in the dorm, Jodi_ ,” she mimics. “Fuck you. Do you want coffee or not?”

“Yes, please.”

She sets the pot up, then turns to Todd. “Okay, so what is this too much information thing that I’m probably going to hit you for telling me?”

He bounces again. It’s that kind of morning. “Guess what?”

“Another fuck you, I’m not playing that game, I haven’t had coffee yet, tell me what you want to tell me.”

He beams. “I had sex with a guy last night.”

She blinks at him widely, and Todd has a flash of concern that he’s fucked up by telling her.

Then she comes back to herself. “HOLY _SHIT!_ ” she screeches.

There’s a banging on the wall from the room next to hers. “Hey!” the girl shouts. “Lower your voice, for Christ’s sake!”

“ _FUCK OFF, MY BEST FRIEND’S COMING TO TERMS WITH HIS SEXUALITY,_ ” Jodi yells back. She’s taller than Todd, so it’s not hard for her to pick him up in a hug. “This is such progress! This is wonderful! I’m so happy for you! And proud!”

Todd laughs, hugging her back. “Thanks, Jodi.”

The kettle whistles and Jodi makes the coffee. Todd sits on her bed.

“So, was he cute?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it good?”

Todd considers it. “A little awkward? But nice.”

“Is this gonna be like a relationship thing?”

“No, I’m… not really ready for that yet.”

“ _Ahhhhhhh_.” Jodi punches his arm. “I’m so _proud_ of you, Todd.”

Todd looks at the ceiling and grins.

 

Todd talks to Jodi when he’s at home every day during the summer, too. It’s one of the few things that keeps him sane.

“My parents keep asking if you’re my girlfriend,” Todd tells her. “Or insinuating that you are.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Did you tell them the flaming line?”

“You know, I feel like that would not make things better. My sister even asked again, and usually she just believes me from the first time around.”

“What did you do?”

“I said you weren’t. She asked if you _really_ weren’t, and I said yes, and then she said ‘okay’ and left it alone.”

“Your sister sounds cool.”

“She’s like nine years old and already cooler than me.”

“You gonna tell her?”

“I told you, she’s nine. She already distrusts our parents so she wouldn’t go out of their way to tell them, but she might let it slip in front of them by accident and that would be… bad.”

In truth, she probably wouldn’t. She also seems to be pretty guarded around them, trained to be careful about what they know and what they don’t, even if she tells Todd pretty much everything. That she’s learned how to do this makes his heart ache.

“God, your parents suck.”

“No disagreement from me.”

 

Sophomore year, Todd and Jodi are playing in a vacant music classroom when he glances up from the loud Ramones song they’re playing to see Jamie Winters and his best friend Ricky Jung politely waiting for them to finish. Todd yelps and stops playing. Jodi looks up from the drums. 

“Yeah? What do you want?” Jodi asks brusquely, ignoring the fact that Todd has had the biggest crush on Jamie Winters for close to a year, and he generally tries to not talk around him _ever_ , but when he does, he definitely _does not ask him questions bluntly because he doesn’t want him pissed off in his general vicinity._

Jamie and Ricky glance at each other.

“You guys sound pretty good,” Jamie says.

“Thank you,” Todd whispers.

“We heard that you guys were the dorks who liked to play music,” Ricky adds. Jodi narrows her eyes.

“You’re really endearing yourself to us, Jung.” Jodi tends to run on a last name basis with everyone but Todd.

“What Ricky meant was,” Jamie cuts in hastily. “Is that we’ve been looking for people to play with. Ricky plays bass. I’m good at vocals.”

Todd’s pretty sure he’s good at everything. He mercifully doesn’t say that out loud, but instead looks at Jodi, who raises her eyebrows.

“Prove it.” She gestures towards the instruments. “Should be a bass guitar in there.”

She and Ricky work together to set it up, leaving Jamie and Todd in awkward silence.

“I like your jacket,” Todd blurts out. Jamie looks a little surprised, then glances down at his bomber jacket.

“It looks very comfortable.” Oh, god. Oh, god. Todd wants to die. He sees Jodi throw a sympathetic look over her shoulder.

“…thanks? It is.”

“That’s good.” He hopes the next time he plays guitar, it _really_ electrocutes him this time, enough to kill him, because the dead don’t have memories, right? Please?

Ricky, thank God, starts playing “Sabotage” on the bass then, so Todd doesn’t need to talk anymore, maybe ever.

When Jamie sings “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Todd has the most powerful moment of _I would do anything you asked if you agreed to just keep singing_ he’s had since he heard Kurt Cobain sing for the first time. He looks to Jodi.

“You’re all right,” she says briskly, which he knows means she’s contemplating it and covering for it.

Jamie looks at him. “What did you think, Todd?”

He said Todd’s name. He _knows_ Todd’s name. “Um.” He clears his throat. “I, er, liked it a lot.” Is he throwing Jodi under the bus here? He can’t throw Jodi under the bus just because a cute boy knows his name. “But, uh, obviously, I have to engage, _talk_ , talk about it further… talking with my… compatriot.”

They’re all staring at him. He is the biggest idiot that ever disgraced the face of the Earth.

“What Todd said,” Jodi answers, swiftly doing her best to rescue him.

“Sounds good.” Jamie smiles at both of them (and Todd is _fine_ ). Ricky claps them each on the shoulder and leaves.

Todd looks back to her. “Well? What did you _really_ think?”

“They’re both really good.”

“Do you want them to play with us?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Then _why_ -“

“Because I wanted to know how they’d take it. They were both calm and courteous. Means it’s less likely that they’re assholes.”

“Oh.” Todd leans against the wall. “Okay.”

She grins at him. “Did your pants feel uncomfortably tight when he started singing?”

“Oh my _god._ ”

“When he was singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, did you wish there was something _else_ that he was blow-“

“I’m going to murder you.”

 

Jodi tells them yes, of course, and Ricky and Jamie start playing with them.

Ricky is bright and optimistic and blunt, unhesitatingly willing to tell one of them that they’ve done well or poorly. His smile is wide and joyful, and takes every compliment of his abilities (of which there are many; he is an excellent bass player) is greeted with an exaggerated statement of how wonderful he is, while clearly taking every example of praise to heart. Jodi keeps offering to try and outdrink him because she thinks he’d be a fun drunk. Todd thinks she might be wearing him down.

Jamie is even more sarcastic than Todd, has a dry streak a mile long, but still blushes and looks down whenever anyone pays him a compliment. He doesn’t smile genuinely often, but Todd almost wants to keep a notebook for when he does, just to keep a list and remind him of every one. Todd finally relaxes enough to talk to him. They share the same taste in music and movies and TV, and Todd is _gone_ , so far and so fast that there’s only an outline of where he was before Jamie.

 

They were all drunk at the time after playing together, so Todd’s not sure he can really remember, not properly, anyway. But this is the way he thinks it happened:

He thinks that they were all hanging out in Ricky’s room, tired and giggly, Ricky and Jodi getting into a air guitar battle.

He thinks that Jodi was lying across Ricky’s bed, head lolling upside down to watch them.

He _knows_ that Jamie was sitting next to him, leaning against him, Todd so aware of every move he made.

He’s pretty sure that Jodi’s the one who actually said it.

“Guys,” she’d said. “We’re good enough to fucking do this.”

Todd had blinked at her. “Fucking do what?”

“ _This._ What we were just doing.”

“Air guitar?” Jamie asked, slurring a little. “Cause you guys aren’t _shit_ at that.”

“Hey, fuck you.” Ricky looked miffed enough to get into it a little, but Jodi shushed him.

“No. _Music_. We could be a fucking, a fucking band.”

They had all stared at her.

“You mean,” Todd said slowly. “You mean, for real?”

“Yeah, I mean for real. Let’s just. Let’s fucking _do_ it, you know? Let’s be a fucking band.”

They were all silent.

“ _YEAH!_ ” Ricky’d roared suddenly. “ _LET’S FUCKING DO IT!_ ”

It’s all a bit hazy after that, the bellowing and cheering they had done. What _is_ for certain is that they had all woken up in the late morning, heads pounding, with a piece of notebook paper taped to Jodi’s forehead. It was emblazoned simply with _MEXICAN FUNERAL_ , their names all scrawled underneath it.

They don’t remember why they picked it.

They like it anyway.

 

“You’re in a _band?_ ” Amanda’s voice hits almost a screech.

“ _Owwwwwwwww_ , Amanda.” He readjusts the phone slightly.

“Sorry, just. You’re in a _band?_ ”

“I am.”

“This is the coolest thing that ever happened to me.”

“ _You’re_ not in a band.”

“I could be! That’s what I wanted to tell you, before you told me about the band. What’s it called, by the way?”

“Mexican Funeral.”

“ _Ahhhhhhhhh_.”

“What did you want to tell me, sis?”

“I started playing drums!”

Todd grins, kicking his feet onto the overturned bulk Ramen box he hasn’t gotten around to getting rid of yet from where he’s sitting on his bed. “That’s great!”

“Yeah! I really like them! Mom and Dad are furious! It’s great!”

Todd laughs. “Then how are you going to get your own set? Are you learning at school?”

“Yeah, but I’m delivering papers cause Mom and Dad think it’s a respectable thing for a kid to do and I’m gonna buy my own and I’m gonna hide it at Billy’s house until it’s too late to return it and then I’m gonna put it in the basement.” Amanda sounds pleased with herself. “What do you think?”

Part of him thinks that it’s depressing that she already has to learn how to keep the things she cares about from them so she doesn’t have to get shit from them. The other part is pretty proud for her being devious. “Not bad.”

He can hear her beaming. “Thank you.”

 

Todd slowly stops showing up to class and focusing more on the band. They make up a bunch of tee shirts.

“Are we really doing this?” he whispers to Jamie, running his hand over a shirt. 

Jamie bumps his shoulder into Todd’s. Todd likes it when he does that. He likes it when Jamie’s touching him in general, and wishes he could think of a not-weird way to do it more often. “Fuck yeah we are. And we’re gonna be great. We’ve got the best guitar player in the world, after all.”

Todd flushes, still looking down at the shirt. “You’re selling Cobain and Hendrix pretty short here, Winters.”

“Pretty up there, then.” Jamie grins at him. “Cobain was great, but really? You’re putting him next to Hendrix?”

“Kurt Cobain was one of the greatest musicians ever.”

“You having a monster crush on him has nothing to do with that, then?”

“Nope.”

Jamie laughs. Todd’s pretty sure the tips of his ears go red. They tend to do that around him. “You’re good to talk with, I gotta tell you.” He smiles and holds out his fist. “A most excellent bro.”

Todd smiles back and hits his fist with his own. 

He’s gotten pretty good at smiling at straight boys like there’s nothing wrong.

Maybe just one in particular.

 

Todd’s failing his classes.

He has an asshole thought, and then dismisses it.

 

No one in Mexican Funeral covers their arms. It’s one of their punk things, their rebelling against the system. They all wear tee shirts, baring everything that might be written on them proudly.

This doesn’t mean that they pass on what’s on their arms, necessarily. If they see writing suddenly appearing, they don’t ask what it says. They notice the handwriting, though. Todd sees all of it, the words that seem to run together because there’s so many of them on Jodi, the looping cursive on Ricky, the scrawl on Jamie’s. They joke about the words a lot.

“Man, it is really gonna kill my punk vibe if they keep dotting their ‘i’s with hearts,” Ricky says at one point, shaking his head as they all laugh.

Todd doesn’t really talk about his Match. Even if he doesn’t like the way it all works, there’s something very important to him about keeping his Match’s scribblings quiet. They still write often, inane observations about their day, their classes, professors they don’t like. But sometimes, late at night, when Todd should be working on homework but isn’t, he’ll get something on his arm other than _you know, I was not adequately prepared for math and feel like this should make me exempt from this bullshit._ Sometimes it carries weariness with it.

_I’m so tired._

_I don’t understand how to do any of this._

_What would I be, if they hadn’t fucked me up?_

Todd doesn’t write back, but he doesn’t tell anyone about it, either.

Some secrets should be kept.

 

He gets put on probation. 

The asshole thought is now recurring.

 

Okay, maybe it’s not such an asshole thought after all.

It would require a lot of lying. To everybody. And Todd would have to keep track of the lies, but he’s always been good at that. He learned young, knows what he’s doing.

He can lie to his parents. He’s _always_ lied to his parents. Amanda would be harder, and so would Jodi and Ricky and Jamie, but guilt can be managed, compartmentalized, stored away for later until he no longer needs to keep deception going. 

And really, he won’t be doing it for very long. School obviously can’t work for him. He just does this until he can get an apartment, a job, land on his feet a little, really kick the band into high gear. It’s just a short lie. If not a white one, a gray one. No one needs to know. Doable.

He rehearses it in his head a few times. Mentally sets himself up so he’ll know what he’s saying to who. Prepares, and then goes for it.

“Mom,” Todd says, voice trembling just a little bit when he calls her, like he thinks it probably should. “I’ve had an attack. I’ve got pararibulitis.”

 

His parents seem to have the response of “we’ll give you all the money you need for the medication provided that you don’t tell anyone we know about it because it’s going to make us seem weird”.

So really, isn’t this okay? Isn’t it okay, to take the money from them? After all they’ve put him through, after all they’ve put Amanda through, isn’t this justice? Isn’t this _fair_? Doesn’t Todd deserve this, after years of being judged and hiding himself and who he is and what he likes?

He does. He does, and it’s not like he’ll do it forever, and this is all right.

 

“You’re going to be okay?” Amanda whispers through the phone. She’s twelve years old and he feels bad for worrying her but it’s going to be fine. She won’t be worried for long. “Really?”

“You know how it works with Dad. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sorry that this is happening to you.”

“Don’t be. Really, don’t worry about it. Don’t think about it. Tell me about school.”

 

Jodi, Ricky, and Jamie all hug him. That’s hard, too. They understand why he’s dropping out. Everyone does and he feels bad about that, but it can be shoved. It can all be shoved. 

 

Getting a job is harder than he expected. People don’t really want to hire a college dropout. He starts running pizzas and working at a florist’s. It’s fine. Just until the band kicks in.

 

Todd eventually gets enough money that he probably doesn’t need to keep up the lie. But having enough money that he can keep living comfortably is fine, right? It’ll make it easier to write songs. 

 

_I like your poems_ , his Match writes once. _They’re nice._

Todd realizes he means his lyrics, the ones that he hashes out on his arm, scratching out words that don’t work, circling the phrases that do. He swallows. Thinks about writing back a thank you. Shakes his head, changes his mind.

 

Some years pass. They keep trying at the band. Jamie works on construction sites around the city. Jodi works as a secretary. Ricky’s a librarian. Todd keeps saying he’s got pararibulitis. It’s okay, though. He’s at this point completely detached from the lie because this is totally acceptable. He knows it is.

 

Amanda comes to visit Todd when she’s barely eighteen. She’s going to visit him properly for the first time in New York, and then they’re going to fly back together for her high school graduation. She stays on his couch in his crappy apartment and acts like it’s the best thing in the world. It’s the first time they jam together, too, and she’s really good.

“This place is _awesome_ ,” she tells him repeatedly, and it makes him really happy to see her so joyous. 

On the day before they go back, though, she’s antsy, picking under her nails. He wants to ask her, but she always tells him everything, so he waits.

Finally, while he’s doing the dishes. she leans against the counter.

“So, um. I’ve been talking with my Match.”

“Yeah?” He puts the plates in the drying rack. “Sounds nice.” Just because he doesn’t buy into it doesn’t mean he thinks Amanda shouldn’t. “What’re they like?”

“Um, kind of anxious, sometimes. But also kind of a badass? And funny. And nice. I like them.”

Todd smiles as he turns the sink off.

“I’m glad.”

She swallows audibly. “Her name’s Farah.”

Todd’s hand hesitates on the faucet and in the pause that follows, Amanda bursts into tears.

“Holy shit, Amanda, no.” He quickly heads over and hugs her. “Don’t freak out, it’s okay.”

“Don’t be mad at me,” she whispers, voice hitching. “I know you’re not Mom and Dad, I know you’re not, but I can’t even tell them, I can’t tell _anyone_ cause maybe it’ll make it back to them and I can’t have you hate me, too-“

“I don’t hate you. It’s gonna take a lot for me to hate you, and this nowhere _near_ ranks.”

“I don’t know how to have this conversation with them.”

“You don’t have to yet.”

She pulls back and wipes her eyes on the heels of her hands. “Being bi really doesn’t matter to you?” she mumbles.

“Amanda-“ he laughs a little. He can’t believe it. So much time spent trying to figure out how to have this conversation with her and it springs itself on him. “Amanda, holy shit, stop crying, okay, me too! Look at me, me too.”

She stares at him, eyes wide, still wrapped in tears. “Really?”

“Yeah! It’s okay! It’s more than okay, it’s fine.”

“You too, really?”

“Me too, really. Swear to God.”

She sniffles again. “So that explains your Kurt Cobain thing?”

“Fuck, really?” he mutters. “Does everyone notice this?” Amanda chokes out a laugh and he grins at her, feeling a little weepy himself. “It’s okay. It’s honestly okay.”

“Oh my god.” She hugs him again. “This was so much simpler than I thought it was. I can’t believe I was losing my shit.”

He doesn’t say anything, just smiles and hugs her a little tighter.

When she moves back again, she shoves her wet hair off of her face. “So, who was it for you?”

“Mulder on _X-Files_.”

“ _Really?_ ”

“Hey, don’t judge me.”

“Just seems like an odd kind of guy for you.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Just saying.”

“What about you?”

“Faith on _Buffy_.”

Todd laughs. “Now _that_ is unsurprising.”

“I can’t tell if I should be telling you to fuck off or not.” She’s grinning, though, looking happier than she did before, and Todd figures that’s a win.

“You really like her?”

“Yeah.” She gives him that soft smile she gets sometimes, when something’s hit her deep. “Yeah, I really do.”

“Then that’s all that matters. No other bullshit.”

“No other bullshit,” she echoes, bumping his fist.

 

They fly back together. Amanda’s bubbly, looking out the window every time they land or take off.

“I can’t wait to do this all the time,” she whispers. She’d sold the gap year to their parents as important to broaden her horizons before she goes to school. “I can’t wait to _always be on planes_ , oh my god, Todd, this is going to be so _cool_.”

Todd just leans his seat back a little and grins.

 

Being around his parents isn’t so hard this time around. Maybe because he and Amanda are united in one more thing against them. He doesn’t know. But sitting next to them in the giant auditorium of his former high school doesn’t feel so suffocating, waiting for Amanda to take her diploma from his former principal. She’s glowing with happiness and sneaking glances at them. She sticks her tongue out at Todd. Todd sticks his tongue out back.

Amanda grins at Mr. O’Malley, takes the diploma.

She freezes, looking at her hand. Her face flickers between confusion and pain. Todd sees Mr. O’Malley ask if she’s all right. Her face is consumed by horror.

She screams and drops the diploma and Todd’s already on his feet, his parents behind hm as he bolts for the stage. He dashes up the stage as she sinks to her knees.

“Amanda, what-“

“Don’t,” she sobs as he reaches for her. “Don’t, it’ll burn you too, don’t.”

He knows what’s happening with a sudden, sickening lurch. “It’s okay,” he whispers, hugging her tightly despite her whispering protests about fire, trying to shield her from everyone’s staring eyes and concerned whispers and shouts a little. “It’s going to be fine.”

 

They sit in a hospital room together, despite the fact that every Brotzman knows what’s happening. Amanda’s old enough that she can say who she wants with her, and the only one she wants with her is Todd, and after he overhears his father mutter “God, I’m just _mortified_ ”, he’s especially inclined to agree. Amanda doesn’t want to sit on the bed, so instead they sit next to each other on the floor, their legs brushing against each other.

“Did everyone see that?” she whispers, the first thing she’s said since she told them she wanted Todd in the room with her.

There’s no way around that one. “Yeah,” he says. “God, I’m sorry, Amanda.”

She shakes her head and looks in her lap, pursing her lips as she tries not to cry. He puts an arm around her shoulder.

“I thought I was safe.” Her voice is breaking over and over again as she tries to keep the sobs in. “Because you had it. I thought I was okay. I thought I wasn't going to get it. I thought it was gonna be okay. Is that an asshole reaction?”

Todd feels another wave of bile in his throat. _Not like faking a debilitating fucking disease because you didn’t want to pay attention in school anymore. Not even close._ “No. It’s not.”

“Did you ever get one in public?”

“I-“ God, he should tell her. He should tell her now. But she’s already going through enough tonight. He shouldn’t tell her now, right? It’s okay. “Not like that.”

“That was everyone I know.” Her voice cracks again.

“I know.”

“Mom and Dad are going to be so embarrassed.”

“Hey, _fuck_ that.” He shifts so he can look her in her red rimmed eyes. “Amanda, _fuck_ that, that is _not_ your priority right now. It’s at the very bottom of your list of priorities.”

“What if they take it out on me?”

“Then you tell them to go _fuck_ themselves, because they don’t get to make you feel shitty about this.”

She sniffs. “You’re a good brother.”

No. He’s not. He’s not a good brother, or a good son, or a good friend. He is _profoundly_ an asshole.

Todd doesn’t say this. Instead he tightens the arm around her shoulders.

“I love you,” he says quietly. Amanda sniffs.

“I love you, too.”

 

They keep Amanda in the hospital overnight for observation. Todd promises she can call him if she needs to. When she hugs him goodbye, her arms are like a vice, like she’s scared she’ll never see him again.

Todd doesn’t sleep. Instead he sits on the edge of his childhood bed, hands shaking.

He’s been an asshole. He has been _such_ an asshole. Every justification he’s had, every reason, every excuse, was stripped away the second Amanda stared at her body doing something she didn’t understand. 

There’s so much that needs to be undone. There’s so much that _can’t_ be undone. He can’t sweep all of this under the rug. There’s some things he can disguise, things he can smooth over as best he can. But he can’t fix this for Amanda, or for his parents, or for his friends.

Todd pulls out of his mug of markers and writes, still trembling, on his arm.

_God, I’m such an asshole._

His arm tingles a few moments later.

_I’m sure that’s not true._

He shakes his head.

_It is._

_Trust me._

And then after another moment-

_You don’t want me for a Match, anyway._

He gets no response. He grips his hair until his scalp is numb.

 

Three weeks later, before Todd goes to the airport, he tells his parents and Amanda that the pararibulitis has disappeared. 

Amanda looks hopeful for the first time since her first attack, and he wants to dig himself a hole, and bury himself in it.

 

Todd paces back and forth in his apartment.

Okay, so, there’s some of the money left over by the last amount his parents gave him. He can sell the apartment and that’ll help. He can’t think of much else.

Well.

There is one more thing.

 

Later, Todd will wonder if he did it because he actually wanted to get the money for Amanda, or if he just wanted to avoid telling them the truth. Right now, he just does it.

Stealing the band’s equipment is easy.

So’s getting caught trying to sell it.

He keeps his guitar, hides it under his bed, and this was a prudent decision, it would seem, because when Jodi comes over, murder in her eyes, she looks like she would about ready to smash it.

They scream at each other for a long time. Todd knows he has no basis on which to shout, to be anything but apologetic, but he defaults to defensive anyway, yells things he can’t even remember.

“You couldn’t even trust us to ask us for the help,” he remembers her saying, close to tears. “You didn’t even feel close enough to us to do that.”

“I did what I needed to do for Amanda,” he’d snapped back. “And I’d do it again.”

In the end, she tells him never to talk to her again. That Jamie and Ricky feel the same. That he’s a fucker, and she hopes he’s miserable, and slams the door behind her, and so he loses his three best friends. He thinks of never sitting on his couch with Jodi shooting the shit again. Never watching TV with Ricky with snarky running commentary.

He thinks of never seeing Jamie look at him out of the corner of his eye and grin while they’re playing.

That’s the point where he starts crying.

 

“You could just send the money to me, you know,” Amanda says quietly while Todd unpacks into his new apartment. It’s about an hour’s drive from her house, the one she bought because she can’t go on her trip or to college anymore. “Fuck, you don’t have to give me the money in the first place.”

“You need it and Mom and Dad can’t give it to you.” The apartment is in a shitty apartment building called the Ridgely, and the landlord seems pretty unstable, but the rent is cheap. “So I will.” Because it’s his fault that they can’t in the first place.

“You didn’t have to move back here, though. You don’t even like it here.”

He doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. “Mom and Dad aren’t going to take care of you or come visit you.”

“I don’t need to be treated like a child.”

“I’m not trying to-“ he sighs, frustrated. “I just want to make sure you’re okay, all right, and Mom and Dad are just going to want to pretend you don’t exist and I know that for a fact, so I just want to make you know that you… exist.”

“Sorry.” Amanda fidgets with her hands. “I know you have more experience with this.”

“That’s not, no, don’t apologize. I just…” Come _on_ , if he could keep the guilt down then, can’t he do it here? “I want you to be all right.”

“Remember what you said, though.” She smiles bravely. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.”

God, Todd’s an asshole.

He nods.

 

Years pass. He jumps from a few different jobs for a while, jumping from payments to Amanda to payments to Amanda to payments to Amanda. He does what he can. 

 

When his Match sends him those messages, the exhausted ones, the frightened ones, Todd replies. He’s trying to be better as a person and this seems like it might be part of it.

_I don’t know what I’m doing_ , he gets.

_Me neither,_ he answers. _It’s relaxing, right?_ He doesn’t know if jokes come through or not. He hopes so.

_That’s one way of looking at it._

And then he gets _what do I do, when I’m too tired to keep moving?_

Todd thinks.

_Take a nap and remind yourself that’s okay._

He’s always been more of a ‘take the advice I don’t follow’ anyway.

 

Stealing from Dorian goes about as well as stealing from Mexican Funeral did.

After Dorian waves a gun at him, roars at him about how he’s got him, he owns him now, Todd sits very still in his apartment for a minute, and then screams at nothing for another.

 

The morning Dorian threatens Todd by beating his car in, his arm tingles as he tumbles back into his apartment. He lies on his crappy messy floor, spreadeagled, staring at his crappy peeling ceiling, thinking about his crappy probably pretty short life, and looks at his arm.

_I wonder what good restaurants are in Seattle. Although to be perfectly honest, I’ll probably just get pizza, it’s a good universal standard._

Oh god.

Oh _god._

They’re in Seattle. They’re in Seattle.

Isn’t this how it starts? How you find your Match? It does in movies sometimes, the romantic comedies Jodi had a soft spot for (and there’s the stab that he gets when he thinks about Jodi, about any of them, really), they write something on your arm about where they are and you run into each other and actually _meeting_ them, fucking Christ, what’s he supposed to do then? He doesn’t want to _meet_ this person. What will they expect from him? What’s he going to do? How can he add _this_ into his existence, this complicated bullshit he’s soldered into his life? What’s he supposed to do?

Todd stares at his arm for a while, debating whether or not to write back. Should he tell his Match where he lives? Should they meet up just to get everything out of the way? Clear the air?

Todd squeezes his eyes shut. No, he shouldn’t, because he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to add this into everything right now. His life is too convoluted already, he can’t add one more complication to anything. If one more fits itself into his world, he might actually snap. Just pretend that he doesn’t live here and he doesn’t know that his Match is hypothetically nearby, and everything’s going to be fine.

Everything’s going to be fine.

He can do this.

Todd gets up, and he gets his clothes, and he tells himself he has his shit together.

 

It turns out he doesn’t.

On an _unbelievable_ scale.

 

_Okay_ , Todd tells himself as he climbs the stairs. _Okay._ This isn’t all terrible. It’s… mostly terrible. Very terrible. Almost entirely terrible. But it can’t be _all_ terrible. There’s got to be something.

He lost his job: bad.

He’s implicated in a murder he had nothing to do with: bad.

He stole something from a crime scene: potentially bad? maybe morally gray.

His landlord wants to and probably will kill him: bad.

He has no car and is basically out of money: bad.

He saw himself in the hotel, in different clothes, looking beat to shit, shouting at somebody: _bad_ , bad and weird and fucked up and possibly a sign that all of this is finally working it’s way into his brain and he is going crazy and might die from it. Bad.

God, there’s so much here. There’s got to be _something._

He didn’t find his Match: _good_. If he ran into his Match, they missed each other completely, and he didn’t have to deal with that.

Although, he thinks a little bitterly as he unlocks his door, the night’s still young. It’s definitely been that kind of _fucking_ day. Maybe he’ll still meet his Match tonight.

Todd opens the door. A man dressed in yellow looks up from where he’s throwing his things in through Todd’s window, and beams at him.

“Hi!”

 

“Farah isn’t talking to me,” Amanda whispers over the phone. Todd frowns.

“Really? Did you have a fight?” Farah and Amanda talk regularly. Amanda gets really red and her hands flutter when she talks about her, grinning at the floor, which is a good sign. Todd’s never heard of them getting into an argument before, although he supposes it happens. Amanda says she’s less chaotic, a little less punk, so he imagines they clash sometimes.

“No. Yesterday she told me she had to do something, and that it would be okay and I shouldn’t worry, and now she’s not responding to me.” Her voice is shaky. “I don’t know what to do. What if she’s hurt?”

“We’ll, uh.” He squeezes his eyes closed, thinking of when his Match disappeared for a while, and how nervous he’d been, and how they hadn’t even talked. “Listen, we’ll give it three more days, all right, just in case there’s nothing wrong, and then if you don’t hear from her by then, then we’ll, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out.”

“Thank you, Todd.” She sounds grateful. She shouldn’t be grateful to him for anything. Ever.

“You’re welcome.”

 

Dirk Gently is overly cheerful, very loud, insistent on asking him questions about a case he wants nothing to do with, and completely impervious to Todd’s repeated _very_ reasonable points that he is _absolutely batshit insane._

So of course Amanda likes him.

“So how long’s he been your best friend?” she asks after her attack, when Dirk’s waiting out by the car and Todd’s standing just inside the doorway, Amanda glancing over his shoulder every few seconds, presumably to where he’s still waiting. “I didn’t hear about the advent of a best friend. Or _any_ friends.” She doesn’t know exactly what went down with the members of Mexican Funeral, just that something happened. She doesn’t ask after it since she’s seen how upset it makes Todd, no matter how he tried to hide it.

“He’s not my best friend,” he mutters. “Or my friend, full stop. I met him yesterday.”

She seems distracted. “He said he’s a private detective, right? Do you think we could ask him to find Farah?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not actually a detective, he’s just some guy who climbed through my window.”

She frowns. “Why did he climb through your window?”

“I-“ Todd doesn’t want to describe the murder thing to her. “Look, just… just trust me, he’s not the guy to ask to look for Farah.” He walks outside with her, already rummaging in his pocket. “You still haven’t heard from her?”

“No.”

“Okay. Couple more days, all right? Then we’ll go looking.” He pulls the money out of his pocket. “Here’s what I’ve got.”

“You’re gonna be okay, right? I mean, if you lost your job, are you gonna have enough money to get by?”

He doesn’t smile brightly, because too bright would give the game away, but he does smile as reassuringly as he thinks is realistically possible. “Oh yeah, of course. I have emergency savings. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, totally. Don’t worry about it.”

Amanda hugs him and he hugs her back, grateful for once that he knows how to lie.

 

Nothing in Todd’s life makes sense right now. The fucking guy who looked like him or was him or whatever, the fucking band of four _assholes_ with the weird asshole-y name, the fucking dead landlord in his apartment that’s not helping him with the murder suspect stuff, _the one specific fucking asshole who dragged him into this shit in the first place and is now trying to tell him about his place in the universe_. Nothing makes sense, everything’s in even more disarray than it was before, he can’t keep track of his own brain. Everything is shit and _he_ is shit and there’s just a whole lot of shit right now.

Todd sees the dog on the sidewalk again, meandering around like it has been all day. He can see a collar on it.

Nothing makes sense. Everything is shit.

Returning the dog would make sense. Returning dogs is something people do, and it’s a good thing that they do. It’s not shit.

He stops the bus.

But then it leads to something _else_ that doesn’t make sense, something _else_ that is almost certainly shit, and that’s the girl, and then there’s the ticket, because not even the uncomplicated things in his life could stay that way for long.

Todd lies in the ruins of his apartment for a long time, on his floor yet again. There’s some shit on his bed he doesn’t feel like clearing off right yet. He doesn’t even want to move. Possibly ever again.

Eventually, he lets out a long groan and grabs a pen. He wants it known that he told _somebody_ so when this goes poorly, even if that somebody isn’t going to know what _this_ is.

_I’m about to do something really stupid_ , he writes on his arm before he goes looking for his phone. It tingles back at him right as he finishes dialing.

_I do really stupid things all the time, so I’m sure you’ll be just fine._

For some reason, Todd doesn’t find this comforting as he waits for Dirk Gently to pick up the phone.

 

“Yup,” he mutters to himself as he runs from the house they inadvertently set on fire with a shower curtain flapping behind him. “Yup, yup, yup, yup, I was right, I was right, _god_ , stop doing dumb fucking shit-“

 

Except for the part where he doesn’t, because instead of trying to find a job or figure out what to do about his apartment, he’s eating pizza in a car with Dirk while the Corgi he kidnapped from Rimmer’s house eats turkey slices in the backseat.

“She probably shouldn’t be eating that right off the seat,” Todd says, looking over his shoulder at her.

Dirk shrugs. “It’s just a car, not like there’s anything else she can eat off of.”

“How did you say you got this again?”

“Oh, normal ways. Very normal, legal, acceptable ways.”

Great. Instead of trying to find a job or figure out what to do about his apartment, he’s eating pizza in a _stolen_ car with Dirk while the Corgi he kidnapped from Rimmer’s house eats turkey slices in the backseat. That makes it so much better.

“Oh, cheer up,” Dirk says brightly, ignoring the disbelieving look it gets him. “There are worse ways to spend an afternoon. You could be getting murdered. Or experimented on. That’s a _terrible_ way to spend an afternoon.”

“Why experimented on?”

Dirk blinks. “No reason.”

Todd sighs, and holds his hand out to the dog to see if he can pet her. She just gives him what he’s pretty sure is a disdainful look and goes back to eating her turkey, which is a reaction Todd can respect. Dirk takes another bite of pizza and looks out the window, eyes thoughtful and far away.

 

The woman they rescue is smart, and a badass, and beautiful, and Todd doesn’t know how to talk to women, or really anybody. So of _course_ he tells her that she looks good in his clothes, because his brain doesn’t have a chance to tell his mouth that it’s an idiot. Maybe he could just die on the spot. That would be good.

In addition to this, it doesn’t occur to ask her for her name, and by the time it does, she’s striding off to get guns, and he can’t tell if he’s mad at Dirk or not because he keeps thinking of the notes in his voice when he asked Todd if he thought he _liked_ being thrown around by the universe, which is marring his anger, and everything is a _mess._

It gets significantly messier when after Todd tells Dirk he doesn’t know what he is at him and he pats him on the shoulder, Dirk calls after the woman saying “Farah, wait up!”

Todd is well aware that he helped set this house on fire, and so probably should not sit on the curb a little heavily because of all the curse words running through his head. He does anyway, putting his head in his hands to boot, which probably does not look very innocent, but it’s the only move he sees available to him right now.

“For the record,” he mutters, just to make himself feel better. “I didn’t know she was my sister’s Match when I hit on her.”

Ineptly.

When he ineptly hit on her.

 

Todd goes to the cops in an effort to set this right, because maybe if he starts setting shit on track, things will start to sort themselves out a little. He can get himself extricated from whatever this insane case Dirk’s set himself on, figure out a way to tell Amanda he’s found her Match (and god, how is he supposed to do that? he doesn’t even know where he’d begin, fuck, what if he doesn’t even _see_ Farah again, what does he do then?), get a job, maybe he’ll still be an asshole, but he’ll be an asshole without all of this shit.

But then he gets the phone call from Amanda. And it’s the worst he’s heard since graduation, and he can _see_ her, in his head, sinking to the stage, screaming. He’s not sure if what happens on the bus is an anxiety attack or just being out of breath from running to the bus stop.

And listen, Todd doesn’t mean to blurt it out after she asks if there’s a lot of stuff he isn’t telling her, but the thing is, there’s _so many_ things he’s not telling her, and he just throws the first one out there he can think of, the least dangerous of them all.

“I found Farah.”

Amanda blinks, rears back, completely distracted. Is this an asshole move? Probably? Maybe? She should know that Farah’s okay. He doesn’t know. “You _what?_ ”

“I, I found Farah, she’s okay.”

“She wrote me.” Amanda’s rubbing her hand up and down her arm. “She told me she was okay, I was going to tell her that we should find each other because she scared the _shit_ out of me, and then I…” she trails off. “She really wrote me?”

Todd’s stomach clenches. Amanda’s told him this before, how sometimes she worries she’s going to get an attack that tells her she’s getting a message that never actually came from Farah. “Yeah. She did.”

“And you _found_ her? Where is she? What happened?”

“I… don’t know everything that happened.” He doesn’t really want to go into “apparently she was tied to a bed and then she was almost killed because this guy was trying to trade her for a dog”. He’s pretty sure he’s not the one who’s supposed to deliver that news. “And I haven’t seen her since this morning, but I know how to find her. And I hit on her. _Not on purpose,_ ” he adds hastily, berating himself for that coming out of his mouth. “I didn’t know she was your Match, obviously, I didn’t know her name, and I did that, and then I found out her name as she was leaving, and I don’t have any intention- I’m not going to do it again.” Amanda’s staring at him like he’s crazy so he keeps going so he can get as far away as possible from that whole trainwreck. “And I was thinking you should maybe come stay at my apartment, for a while, you can crash on the couch, or, or maybe with Farah, I guess, I don’t know, but maybe… not here.”

She purses her lips slightly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, okay.” She pulls a pen from her pocket, scribbling something before she stands and gives Todd a hug. Todd sees what’s written on her arm when she does.

_I’ll find you._

 

They sit on the bus for a while in silence before Amanda turns to Todd.

“What did you say to her?”

“What did I say when?”

“When you hit on her.”

Todd grimaces.

“Come _onnnn_. Tell me.”

He sighs. “I had to lend her some stuff to wear and I told her she looked good in my clothes.”

Amanda stares at him for a second, then throws her head back and laughs.

“Shut up.”

“You told her she looked good in your clothes?”

“I _said_ shut up.”

“Did you get laid in college? _Ever?_ ”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure you’re not lying to me?”

“I’m positive!”

“Because you have _zero_ game, evidently.”

“My game is fine.”

“If your game was fine, you would have come up with a better line than that. That is _painful._ ”

“I was there, I know how painful it was.”

“ _You look good in my clothes,_ ” she whispers, looking out the window with a grin. “That’s terrible.”

Todd thinks about arguing with her some more, but she looks happier and lighter than he’s seen in a long time, so he lets it be.

 

“We’ll dump your stuff and then we’ll go upstairs and talk to Dirk about where Farah is, okay?” Todd shoulders her bag as they walk through the door.

“Why would we go upstairs?”

“He… lives there now.”

Amanda raises her eyebrows. “He _lives_ there now?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, in an apartment, or in general?”

“In an apartment.”

“Like… for the case?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing, in general, ever.”

“I thought you said you barely knew the guy.”

“I’ve known him long enough to know that.”

“He seems like a nice guy, cut him some slack.”

“He’s _insane_ and he’s going to get me _killed._ ”

“You’re being dramatic.”

Todd bites his tongue, reminding himself that he’s not telling her the full extent of why he’s pretty sure that, in some way or another, Dirk Gently is going to be listed under “cause of death” on his death certificate, while shoving to the side the certainty that she would murder him if she knew, especially if she knew the words “didn’t want to worry you” were involved. “My point is,” he says as he shifts the bag so he can open his door. “He’s probably not far off.”

“Dude,” Amanda says, looking around. “What happened to your place?”

For the first second Todd realizes that Dirk is in his apartment, he’s grateful, because this means he can sidestep the question. And then after the second one, he’s irritated, because _why is Dirk in his apartment._

“Hi, Dirk!” Amanda says cheerfully the moment she sees him, and it’s right then that Todd notices Farah and knows that he doesn’t have the time to say anything.

“Hi, Amanda!” Dirk answers brightly. He turns to Farah, completely oblivious to how she freezes at her name. “This is Amanda, Amanda’s _fantastic_.”

“You’re fantastic!” Amanda beams, joining him in the obliviousness. “I have something I need to ask you.”

“Splendid! Look what we found first, though! Well, look what _she_ found, I proved to have a harder time with the treasure map than I thought I would.”

“You found a _treasure_ map?” Amanda bounces over to stand next to Farah, who looks down at her and then at Todd. Todd stares back at her. She clearly sees the confirmation she’s looking for and her eyes widen. Todd shrugs helplessly, unsure of what he’s supposed to say right now. She looks back down at Amanda (who still hasn’t noticed anything) with an expression that looks both frightened and awed at the same time. It makes Todd uncomfortable to look at, so he returns his attention to Dirk.

“Dirk, this is _my_ apartment.”

“Oh, is that why you’re here?”

Todd can’t tell if he’s being fucked with or not. He can’t tell if he’s supposed to tell Amanda as she tells Dirk what he’s looking at on the map. Farah looks like she might be experiencing a self contained explosion inside of her. He opens his mouth a couple times, but Amanda and Dirk keep plowing on.

“I’m Amanda, by the way,” she finally adds to Farah, who hasn’t spoken. “Cool jacket.”

Farah makes a noise close to a thank you. Dirk beams at Todd.

“It’s all happening!” He turns to Farah. “I _told_ you she was fantastic, Farah.”

Amanda jolts.

“Yeah,” Farah whispers. “She is.”

This is a moment for the two of them, and Todd _definitely_ doesn’t need to be here for Dirk, so he slips out the door and heads down the hallway. He’s not sure where he’s going, considering the fact that he’s pretty sure he’s been exiled out of his apartment inadvertently, but maybe he can lie on a sidewalk and scream for a little while.

“Did you know they were Matches?” Dirk asks, abruptly popping up behind him. Todd stops and turns to face him.

“I- not when we found her. When you said her name this morning, I knew.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it to either of them? It seems important.”

Todd’s eyes narrow. “Goodbye, Dirk.” He goes to leave.

“Todd, wait.”

Dirk’s voice sounds like it did yesterday, when he sounded plaintive and tired and almost resigned, and it gives Todd pause. Makes him turn back.

Dirk tells him he wants his help and Todd thinks. He has no job, no money, his apartment’s a mess. But even terrifying as last night was on the bridge it was also… exciting. Something not quite but close to fun.

And then there’s Dirk, looking at him earnestly. Waiting.

Todd sighs, knowing in the morning he’s going to regret his moment of weakness.

“Try not to get me killed,” he says.

Dirk poorly swallows a smile, looking like he’s trying very hard to seem professional. “I’ll do my best.”

Dirk’s best somehow doesn’t feel very reassuring, but Todd keeps it to himself. “Thanks.”

“I’m going to go get some things out of my car.” He does an awkward head bob. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“You’re welcome.”

Dirk slips by him, and it occurs to Todd again that he doesn’t know where he’s going. He contemplates going to Dirk’s apartment (it feels like a fair turnabout), but realizes his lock probably still works. In the end, he sits against the wall opposite his apartment door for about five minutes, playing games on his phone.

“Todd?”

He looks up at Amanda shouting his name, muffled by his door. “Yeah?” he calls back.

“Farah says you’re just sitting outside the door!”

Todd has a brief second where he wonders if seeing through solid objects is another cool thing Farah can do, before he remembers that he has a peephole, and that he hasn’t turned the sound down on the round of Star Wars: The Force Awakens Pinball that he’s playing. “…yeah.”

The door swings open to reveal Amanda looking down at him, Farah over her shoulder, both looking a little teary.

“This is your apartment,” Farah says. “You’re allowed to be inside of it.”

“It is. I am.”

“What happened to it, by the way?” Amanda asks.

“There were these guys and some… stuff happened. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“We can go somewhere else.”

“Dirk’s apartment is unlocked.” Farah frowns, eyes flickering to either side of Todd. “Where’s Dirk?”

“He said he had to get some stuff out of his car.”

“Tell him we’re going to go talk in his apartment until one of you kicks us out.”

Farah holds her hand out to Amanda, who takes it. As they walk past, Amanda grins wide, tongue sticking between her teeth slightly. Todd smiles back as he stands up and heads into his apartment.

He thinks about cleaning the place up, but decides against it, solely on the basis that he really doesn’t want to. Instead he lies on his bed with a beer and sets up his iPod to play through his speakers. When the door _bangs_ open in the middle of his Beastie Boys song, he sits upright with a yell.

Dirk’s in his apartment, turning around in a small circle, hand running through his hair.

“Dirk,” Todd says, urging his heart to go back to normal. “When there are people who have tried to kill us, you can’t open my door hard enough that it makes a loud noise.”

“Ah. Yes. That seems fair, seems like a logical request, seems good.”

Dirk seems agitated, the hand in his hair seeming to shake a little. Todd frowns, lowering his feet to the floor. “Are you-“

“Hungry!” he cuts in. “I’m hungry.” He heads into the kitchen and starts bustling around. “Where’d your sister and Farah go?”

Todd walks over to the kitchen. “Your apartment. They didn’t want to kick me out of mine.”

“So they kicked me out of mine instead?”

“They don’t know you as well as me.”

“Farah knows me about as well as she knows you.”

“She’s heard about me from Amanda for years.” He leans against the entrance to his kitchen. “So technically, not true.”

Dirk allows for that with a nod. His hands are still twitching around the wooden spoon he’s furiously mixing… something with, Todd can’t actually tell.

“Dirk.”

“Did you know that a man called Branwell Bronte once died standing up to prove he could? And I suppose he succeeded, but really, who was he going to brag to that he’d-“

“ _Dirk._ ”

Dirk looks up from the bowl, face too politely curious. “Hm?”

“Are you… okay?”

“What? Yes, I’m fine, totally fine, completely fine.”

“You don’t.” Todd’s never been good at this with anyone other than Amanda. “You don’t seem okay.”

“Really?”

Todd nods.

“I…” Dirk stares into the bowl. “I ran into someone I used to know.”

“You ran into them?”

“Well.” He doesn’t look like he’s really seeing whatever’s in the bowl. “He found me, I suppose.”

“Is this a trying to kill us kind of guy?”

“Don’t worry. He’d have no interest in you.”

Todd frowns. “Is he a trying to kill _you_ kind of guy?”

“I don’t know. He isn’t usually.”

“Was it the guys from earlier? The rowdy guys?”

“No. He was… in charge of them, at one point, I suppose. And me,” he adds quietly. “He was in charge of me, too.”

“Your boss?”

“Something like.”

Dirk’s face is very tight. Todd doesn’t know this guy, really, doesn’t even really know how he feels about him a lot of the time, but it’s not exactly a pleasant look.

“What _is_ that, exactly?” he asks, pointing to the bowl in his hands. Dirk looks down at it like he’d forgotten he was holding it.

“Um. You know, I’m not _actually_ sure, I just sort of started… putting stuff into it. A stew, perhaps, if you wanted to be kind? Possibly closer to porridge.” Dirk pushes at it with the spoon. “Did you have lettuce in your fridge? That looks like lettuce to me but I don’t really remember what I threw in here.”

“I don’t remember having lettuce.” Todd gingerly reaches out and pokes the weird gray substance. When he pulls his finger away, the gray thing stretches like silly putty attached to his finger. He tries to shake it off, but it sticks. He makes a face. “Please don’t eat this, there’s granola bars in one of the cabinets.”

 

The way Todd wakes up is Amanda poking him repeatedly in the ribs.

“ _Ow._ What?”

“It’s morning. Dirk and Farah are getting ready to go find the thing.”

“Oh.” He sits up and tries to blink the sleep away. “Did Dirk sleep on my couch?”

“I’m guessing so, Farah and I used his bed.”

Todd frowns. “I didn't need to know that.”

Amanda rolls her eyes. “Relax, all we did was sleep, we were both pretty tired.” She grins at him. “That doesn’t mean _never_ , though-“

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I told you, I don’t need to know any of it.” Todd rummages for a new tee shirt and tugs it on. Dirk calls for him out the window and Todd looks through it, indeed regretting his moment of weakness from last night like he thought he would.

“What is this? Can I eat it?”

“Dirk made that, don’t eat it.” Todd pushes his crankiness aside for a moment. “So you like her in person?”

Amanda grins goofily, still holding onto the bowl of what’s supposedly foodstuff. “I like her in person _so much_ , dude. She’s so _sweet_ and _funny_ and _cool_ and god, she’s so _fucking_ pretty, Todd, she’s _great.”_

Todd smiles. “I’m glad.”

“So.” Amanda beams at him. “Now that we had the talk about how _amazing_ Farah is, let’s talk about how you’re acting like what’s going on right now is the _worst_ thing that ever happened to you, when in fact nothing this cool has ever happened to you.”

 

“What does one wear on a road trip to make a random discovery that your former employer slash murder victim slash _knowing_ murder victim wants you to… discover?” Dirk frowns at the choice of words. “Are we going into the woods? Do I wear woods clothes?”

“What are woods clothes?” Farah asks as she drops the pizza box between the four of them. She sits next to Amanda, who immediately leans into her, taking her hand as she grabs a slice of pizza. Farah blushes and grins.

“Clothes you wear in the woods, obviously. Special… fresh air sort of clothes, I don’t know.”

“Don’t let Todd pick the music.” Amanda points at Dirk with her piece of pizza. “All you’ll listen to is Nirvana while Todd waxes lyrical about how important to the fabric of music they are and you’ll just be uncomfortable with how badly he wants to bone Kurt Cobain.”

Todd narrows his eyes. “Nirvana is a good band.”

“Nirvana is _fine_ , I’m just saying I want to prevent anyone getting how much you love them inflicted upon them.”

“Kurt Cobain-“

“ _Is an influential figure and excellent lyricist,_ ” Amanda chants at the same time Todd speaks. “Yeah, sure, and your _gigantic_ crush on him has nothing to do with it.”

“My crush on him has… not everything to do with it. Shut up.”

Amanda grins wide in a way he hasn’t seen in a very long time, and he smiles at the ceiling in an effort to at least pretend he isn’t. He can see Dirk watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“Tell Dirk he’s not allowed to drive.”

Dirk makes an offended noise. “It’s my car!”

“It _is_ his car,” Farah agrees. “Seems like kind of an unfair rule.”

“You haven’t seen the way he drives.”

“I drive _fine._ ”

Todd looks at him. “You drive like you’re in Mariokart, and you have some kind of vengeance mission against whoever’s in first, and you don’t care if you kill yourself taking them out.”

Dirk sniffs. “I don’t know what you’re referencing but I’m going to assume it’s an insult and take it as such.”

Todd snorts.

“Where did you get the car?” Farah asks. Dirk flushes.

“Legal ways,” he and Todd say at the same time. Amanda laughs again.

“Dude, grand theft auto?”

“ _Legal ways,_ ” Dirk stresses.

“That’s right, you said it wasn’t your car,” Todd remembers. “That means your ‘it’s my car’ argument is moot.”

Dirk pulls his key out of his pocket and waves it. “It’s my car if I’ve got the key.”

“That’s not how ownership works.”

“That’s how driving works.”

Lightning fast, Todd makes a grab for the key. Dirk lets out a quick yell of surprise and holds it out of his reach, transferring it to the other hand. He considers, very briefly, tackling Dirk to try and get to it, then decides he still has enough dignity to avoid doing so, returning his hand to his own space. Dirk puts the key back into his pocket, but Todd doesn’t fail to notice it’s the pocket furthest from him.

“Write my obituary if his driving gets me killed tomorrow,” he tells Amanda.

“Liked guitars,” she answers solemnly. “Hated fun. Kind of an asshole.”

True enough. Todd shrugs and takes another slice of pizza.

“If you stole the car, how do you have a key?” Farah asks.

“Because I got it through _extremely lawful means and when you do that they give you keys, so I have been led to believe._ ” 

“If you got the car legally, you would know for a fact that they give you the keys, and you wouldn’t have to be led to believe anything.” Amanda takes a triumphant bite of her pizza. Dirk gains an expression much like the one he wore when she made the point about what private detectives look like. Then he nods thoughtfully, like he’s made an important conclusion, and promptly sticks his tongue out at Amanda.

Todd can’t help it. The gesture takes him so off guard that he laughs, almost choking on his pizza.

“Hey, look, he laughed!” Amanda grins at him, reaching out with her foot to nudge his leg a couple times. Dirk’s staring at him in something that looks almost like delight. “I didn’t know you could do that anymore.”

“I can do stuff. Fuck off.”

“Amanda usually implied you were more eloquent than this,” Farah observes. “You’re not having a good run tonight.”

Amanda gapes at Farah, then beams. “You can stay forever if you want.”

Farah flushes even deeper. “I thought that was already established.”

“It gets even more established the more you give my brother shit.”

“That’s not hard.”

“Shut up. Fuck all of you.”

He’d forgotten what this was like. Just hanging out with people, shooting the shit, screwing with each other.

It’s a good kind of this.

 

Dirk disappears up to his apartment for the night later, Todd sending him with a can of sardines he’d scrounged up in a cabinet so he wouldn’t feed pizza to the kitten. Amanda and Farah are heading to another apartment in the Ridgely, a vacant one. Farah doesn’t want to leave the building in case the guys trying to kill them show up, and it’s especially obvious she doesn’t want to leave Amanda. Todd would worry about them getting in trouble for it, but he’s pretty sure they don’t have a landlord right now, so it’s not that worrying.

Before they leave, Amanda turns to Todd with a flash of a smile.

“Ha,” she says victoriously. “I _told_ you he was a nice guy. Admit it. You like him.”

“I don’t like _you_ ,” he answers. “Get out of my apartment.”

She gives him that wide grin that never fails to make Todd both happy that she’s happy and guilty for all that he’s done to her, and tugs Farah out of the door.

 

_I had a very nice night for the first time in a very long time_ , Todd’s arm tells him with a tingle as he climbs into bed.

He smiles. Thinks about a _me, too_ , but feels too tired, eyes already weighted down.

 

“Your woods clothes look a lot like your city clothes,” Todd observes mildly when Dirk shows up in his tie and a jacket, just like normal, or what passes for it at this point.

Dirk gives him a look. “I’m taking what your sister said about music to heart, just for that.”

Todd’s lips twitch, having that feeling again where he thinks that if he isn’t enjoying himself, he’s something close to it. “Just don’t kill me in this car, please.”

 

They dig for a long time. Dirk will tell riddles Todd can never guess the answer to. Todd tells him the stories behind famous songs, some Dirk knows and some he doesn’t. They work all afternoon and a lot of the night, and Todd’s ready to pack absolutely everything in, hell, he even tries, and then the wholly unbelievable happens, _which is that they actually find something._

“What do you think it does?” Todd says as they settle into the Jeep to sleep for the night.

“Stuff,” Dirk answers sagely.

“Right, of course. Stuff.”

They’re quiet for a moment.

“Did you give me that whole speech and then said we should move to Kansas and be farmers just to get me to keep digging?”

“What?” Todd can’t see Dirk’s face, but his tone is entirely unconvincing and he can’t imagine his face is anything different. “No, of course not.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“It’s shit, from a bull, of which you are full.”

“Yes, thank you for your literal and very eloquent explanation of the term in response to my figurative, flippant response, I’m _extremely_ grateful.”

Todd can see constellations from here. He thinks about telling Dirk about them. “You’re welcome.”

“And also, I am full of nothing except possibly blood and organs.”

He snorts. “Possibly.”

“Well, I’ve never seen inside myself, I don’t know what’s actually in there.” Todd doesn’t respond right away. “I’ve got you stumped, haven’t I? No smart response to that.”

Todd grins at the sky. “Shut up.”

Another companionable silence.

“Amanda was right,” he says suddenly. He might regret saying it in the morning, but he’s going to go for it anyway.

“Of course she was. Your sister’s very smart.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I could have some ideas.”

“Fill me in, then.”

Dirk huffs. “I’d rather have you do it.”

“Told you. Of which you are full.”

“Get to your point, Todd, no one likes a smartass.”

He traces the Big Dipper with his eyes. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Dirk’s quiet for a moment. “Well, yes, obviously,” he replies, something just a little artificial in how nonchalant his tone is. “I’m very cool.”

“I never said that.”

“I’m replacing you with your sister as assistant.”

“Have fun digging stuff up tomorrow on your own, then.”

“…damn.”

Todd smiles and closes his eyes, feeling quiet and less anxious than he normally does. “Good night, Dirk.”

“Good night, Todd.”

 

The noise and the anxiety return, of course, when two of the same wackjob assholes that have been following them around show up and try to kill them for the result of Patrick Spring’s scavenger hunt.

It was a good vacation while it lasted.

 

Todd’s initially not sure why he tells Dirk the truth about the pararibulitis. He’s never said it aloud before, but it feels good to do so. It’s when he’s wandering around the woods a little to burn off that the kitten we've been hauling around is both a shark and a murder weapon energy that he realizes why, a realization that maybe should have come with telling him that they’re friends, but he doesn’t necessarily always do things in order.

He trusts Dirk.

Maybe not necessarily with a gun, but with stuff like that? Those feel acceptable to tell him. Maybe good, even. How did that happen? He shakes his head as he makes his way back to the car.

Dirk's sitting cross legged on the ground up against the Jeep with the kitten in his lap. He’s soothingly petting her, softly singing something it takes a moment for Todd to register as “Let It Be” by the Beatles.

“It's all right,” Dirk says without looking up. “She's calmed down a little. She was just a bit spooked.” He keeps cooing the song under his breath, the kitten purring and bumping her head into his hand to encourage more stroking.

“She’s not going to flip out on us and eat us, is she?” Todd asks warily.

“I don't think so.” Dirk stands up. “She just needed a moment. The song always works eventually.” He puts the cat in the back of the car, pats her one more time, then gets into the driver’s seat. 

Todd gets in on the other side. “Do you… sing to possibly wild things a lot?”

“What?” He starts up the car. “Oh, no. I mean, I did sing to a brown recluse spider once, to coax it into a shopping bag, but that was ‘Spanish Bombs’ by the Clash and it was significantly more stressful than this was.”

“How could that have been more stressful than singing to a shark kitten?”

“Have you seen a brown recluse spider?”

“I- no?” 

“Well, there you go. Much more stressful.” Dirk's eyes flit to the kitten in the backseat. Seemingly satisfied, they go back to the road. “I used to sing it to myself a lot, back when I was in the CIA, you know, when I was younger. The room was designed for echoing.”

“It was big?”

“Lord, no. Empty. Just me and my bed. I mean, sometimes they had me play games with the scientists, logic puzzles and the like, but those were always done in other rooms, the testing ones, experiment sort of things.”

Todd studies Dirk. His tone is artificially bright. 

“Was…” Todd says slowly. “Was the CIA… okay?” It’s not particularly gracefully said, but he can't think of a better way to do it.

“Um…” His hands keep twitching slightly on the wheel, like he wants to be fidgeting with them. “No. I thought it would be, y’know, when I agreed to go, but it wasn't, as it turned out.”

“Was that the guy you saw the other night? Your former boss?”

“Yes.”

“How long were you there?”

Dirk thinks about it. “About four years, I think. Blackwing had a complicated relationship with our knowledge of the passage of time.”

Todd doesn’t even try to understand what that means. “Blackwing?”

“That was what they called it. That branch, anyway, for, y’know, people like me. They wanted to know why we were born like this and such.”

“So there were others?”

Dirk shrugs. “I assume so. I never saw them, not til we… left the program, anyway.”

“When did you leave?”

“Some years ago now. The Rowdy Three…” he shakes his head. “They led the way. I followed.”

“So not that long ago, I guess.”

He shrugs again. “Long enough.”

“So if you helped them leave, then why do they still do the-“ Todd doesn't know to describe what they do, or is even exactly sure of what it is they do, so he gestures kind of widely. “The thing?”

“I followed,” Dirk repeats. “Not helped. It's… complicated. It’s all very complicated.”

Dirk seems a little twitchy, so Todd lets it drop. “The song was nice. It sounded good.”

It works. Dirk brightens a bit. “My mother used to sing it to me when I was upset,” he explains. “It seemed appropriate.”

“Yeah.” Todd glances at the kitten. “That seemed like the definition of upset to me, too.”

 

Telling Amanda feels like a black hole. It’s a moment that keeps taking and taking and taking. Every time he thinks Amanda’s out of rage and hurt, every time he thinks he can’t feel anything else, the moment swallows, and makes way for more.

In a way, it’s almost a relief when the men take him.

He deserves this, anyway.

 

Todd doesn’t understand why Dirk isn’t more excited. _He’s_ excited, and it’s because he thinks he can finally see things the way Dirk does. Everything _is_ connected. There’s a fucking _point._ There’s a fucking point, and they’re going to save Patrick Spring’s life. Maybe _this_ is why Dirk is bouncier than he is. Or maybe that’s just Dirk. He’s not sure. 

Everything is _great._

 

Nothing good lasts.

“Nothing good” evidently including people.

Dirk _lied_ to him.

Todd’s life torn asunder, his sister gone, no job, no landlord, murder suspect, so many brushes with death he can’t actually count them, all of it because Dirk wanted a friend. Someone he could drag into this to, with no thought as to what it would do to the someone in question.

His entire existence has been kicked in the gut because someone felt like it.

Someone he’d actually liked, in the end, who never told him. And that’s the kicker, right there. He’d trusted Dirk, actually starting enjoying being in his company, and he never said a word about what was actually going on. Todd shouldn’t have told him about the pararibulitis. He shouldn’t have said he’d help him in the hallway of the Ridgely. Fuck, he shouldn’t have told Dirk he could drive him to Amanda’s. He should have taken his chances getting to the bus before Dorian killed him. He shouldn’t trust _anybody._

He’ll know better from here on out. No more trusting people, no more getting involved. Once he’s out of this bullshit, once they’re all done, he’ll find a job, keep his head down, talk to no one. It’s better than feeling like _this_ , whatever this even is.

All Todd feels at the look on Dirk’s face when he calls him a monster is the same dual stabbing sensation of hurt and anger he’s been bearing since the hotel.

That’s it.

That’s _all._

 

He wishes he could say that he doesn’t feel anything seeing Dirk get shot, but he doesn’t even think before he pulls the wire out of the arrow, doesn’t regret for a second the shock it gives him, so what does that say about what he really feels and what he really doesn’t?

 

Saving Lydia Spring feels good, and seeing Dirk with two arrows in him feels bad, and it’s a math Todd can’t quite figure out, can’t figure out to rationalize or explain or even understand.

He thinks, even as his arms tingle with the result of being electrocuted, as there are people with guns and crossbows and all kinds of just _terrible_ shit above him, that he wants more of the first, and less of the second.

 

Todd’s sitting on the edge of his couch after his sister leaves, resting his arms on his knees, looking off into the distance.

Because it still feels like Dirk has fucked up his entire life. He had a job, and possessions, and a hell of a lot less people pointing guns at him. But Amanda… has a point. She has a point, and so does how much he found he trusted Dirk, and liked solving the case, liked Dirk himself. All are or have points, ones that tug at him sharply, in ways that nearly ache.

His arm prickles and he wouldn't look, he doesn't feel up for it, but he can see the words forming across his skin without turning his head.

_I really fucked up._

Todd stares. It's in the same handwriting that he sees whenever his Match is upset.

Dirk’s been repeating this entire week that everything's connected. He doesn't believe that whatever’s happening to his Match is directly related to what's going on in his life right now. Nothing is that connected. But maybe things do parallel, a little bit. 

There isn't a marker he notices readily available, so he gets on his hands and knees and looks on the floor until he sees one under the couch. He grabs it and sits on the couch, carefully writing a reply.

_Yeah. Me too._

Todd waits.

_What did you do?_

He thinks about it.

_I tried to fix it,_ he ends up writing. _If you own up to it and you're trying to fix it, then you're not fucking up anymore._

He doesn't get a reply in three minutes, and while he periodically checks his arm to see, he realizes that he was right. Or, more that Amanda was right, and those points he kept trying to ignore were right, and it took him too long to recognize it.

What he told his Match is true. But it's not something he ever would have done without Dirk. 

After another two minutes pass, Todd takes a shower. He puts on clean clothes, and, after hesitating, yanks one of his Mexican Funeral shirts out of his dresser and shoves it in his bag.

He wasn't actually sure if he was going to have to break into Dirk’s apartment or not, but it appears that Dirk not only doesn't believe in clues, but also in locking doors. He kneels down and holds out a hand to the kitten. The kitten eyes him suspiciously for a moment, then deigns to let Todd pet her. He does, for a moment, then heads to where Dirk's jackets are strewn across his couch. The kitten sniffs, but apparently isn't insulted enough to jump out of her body and try to eat him, which is a plus.

“I don't normally wear colors this bright,” he admits to the kitten. “I didn't even like them when I was a kid.”

The kitten just looks at him.

“I think I should probably go with yellow. Cause that's the one he wore when he met me, right, and I guess he knew that was coming, so he probably wanted to wear the one he liked best so he could make a good first impression.” He picks up the yellow one. “Even if he went about it by breaking into my apartment. I know talking to things that don't talk back is my first step on turning into Dirk, by the way.” He puts the jacket in his bag. “Which I’m not going to do, because one of us has to be sane.”

He feeds the cat and closes the door. He doesn't lock it behind him. He doubts Dirk has a key and it's probably just easier this way.

 

Dirk’s face when Todd tells him that he’s his friend is all he would have needed to know he made the right call, but the look when Farah says she’ll invest in their (or Dirk’s, he supposes, considering all the business about wards and assistants) agency definitely helps.

(he doesn’t ask her what Amanda’s told her, and what she knows about him now)

(they’re questions he’s not quite ready to ask yet)

When he gets up to go to the bathroom, he feels a sudden stirring of foreboding in his stomach. He pauses, looking over to where Farah and Dirk are still sitting, Dirk grinning at something, Farah seeming amused. Farah looks less tired than he’s ever seen her, and Dirk looks content. The foreboding’s got to just be his brain, being an asshole as it ever is.

The phone call from his sister and his hands burning and dissolving into screaming agony proves to himself that he should probably learn to trust his gut more.

 

The burning doesn’t last long. Todd’s still screaming when he realizes he’s no longer in pain, opens his eyes and finds his hands are as they’ve always been. He glances up to see a crowd of people around him, Farah pushing through them to kneel in front of Todd.

“Todd, are you-“

“Fine,” he rasps. He scrabbles for his phone and presses it into Farah’s hand. “Something’s wrong with Amanda. Call her. We need to get Dirk.” He can’t trust his voice not to betray what he knows just happened. He staggers to his feet and out to the booth, where…

No Dirk.

“Where-“ he turns around, but Farah’s already on the phone.

“Meet us at the Ridgely, Dirk’s gone, too, it can’t be a coincidence.”

A wave of cold dread washes over him

_Dirk’s gone, too_.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” he asks when Farah hangs up.

“I mean he suddenly looked worried, and he left, and I went out to find him, and he’s just… gone. I don’t know where he went.”

Todd looks back at the booth. There’s nothing to suggest Dirk was even there in the first place.

 

“What happened back there?” Farah asks when they’re nearly to the Ridgely, after a silent walk.

“Nothing.” His fists are tight in his pockets. His fingernails digging into his palms are the only source of pain with them.

“You were _screaming_ , Todd. Like, I don’t know, like someone was pressing a brand into your skin.”

It’s almost funny, how nearly close to right she is. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Or ever, really. 

Because he can’t.

Because he knows what this is.

Because he lied the first time around, and not only is there no reason for anyone to believe him, he’s officially not allowed to complain. He’s going to keep his mouth shut, whining wise, and everything’ll be _fine._ It _will._

“Farah!”

They look up to see Amanda flying at them, Vogel on her heels. She collides with Farah in a hug. Farah holds onto her tightly. Todd’s not surprised. He knows how she sounded. He’d hug her too, if he thought he could get away with it. She pulls back, face blotchy.

“They took them, they took everyone but Vogel and I, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know who they are-“

“Blackwing.”

They all look at Vogel. He seems quieter without the other members of the Rowdy Three. He’s watching them closely.

Farah blinks. “What?”

“You mean the guys you all used to work for?” Todd asks. Vogel looks genuinely startled.

“Is that what Icarus told you?”

“Who’s Icarus?”

“Icarus. You know. The one with the jackets and the best energy, the one-“ Vogel puts on a terrible English accent. “Who talks like this. Your Icarus.”

“Dirk? What, was that his codename at the CIA or something?”

Vogel shakes his head. “Project name.”

“Project name?”

“We were projects. With the people in the white coats and the army men and those little cages, the little rooms we weren't allowed to leave.”

Todd’s stomach lurches. Both he and Amanda glance at Farah, who looks between them. Todd assumes Amanda looks at Farah so she doesn’t have to look at him. They all look back at Vogel. “You… you were kept there? Against your will?” _Cages?_ , he wants to add, but feels like he should tackle one upsetting thing at a time.

Vogel shrugs, “Blackwing doesn’t believe in any will but theirs, if you’re like us or like Icarus. He told you we worked for them?”

“I-“ Todd stops. Reviews the time Dirk had been so nervous in his kitchen (and god, doesn’t that make more sense now), the conversation they’d had about Blackwing in the first place. “No. I guess he didn’t. I just… assumed.”

“Assume nothing,” Vogel says seriously. “Or assume everything.”

“If this is the CIA, then we need to go,” Farah cuts in, before Todd can try and decipher that nonsensical statement. “Todd, can you grab what you need out of your apartment?”

“Yeah, sure, just give me a minute, all I really need is a change of clothes and-“ he stops, remembering. “And some stuff from Dirk’s apartment.”

“Go quickly.”

Todd’s still got a duffle bag, so he starts shoving clothes into it. He doesn’t have a lot of mementoes, a lot of sentimental things. The closest might have been his guitar, and even that carried a lot of painful weight to it. He shoulders the bag and dashes up the stairs to Dirk’s apartment.

He finds the suitcase open untidily by Dirk’s bed in his bedroom. Clothes are scattered all around it. He can see a few dishes in the sink too, uncleaned. A _Cosmos_ coffee table book with a 7/11 receipt sticking out of it as a bookmark, clearly having been very crumpled and hastily smoothed out. Details he hadn’t noticed before somehow. He picks up the coffee table book. He’d sold all his astronomy textbooks to put money towards getting an apartment when he moved out to Seattle, but he’d still checked books out from the library to read when he had time, would watch episodes of both iterations of _Cosmos_ , absorb space knowledge where and when he could. He could probably have told Dirk most of the things in it.

“If you were looking for things we had in common,” he says quietly. “All you had to say was that you’re messy, too. One down.”

There are only two leather jackets tossed across the bed, the green one and one he hasn’t seen before, a dark purple one. He picks up the green one, thinking on how he’d pictured Dirk having more jackets than this. Then he remembers. The blue one is somewhere he doesn’t know, wherever it is probably fairly unwearable at this point, two holes in the same shoulder on either side and stained with blood. The other is gone with Dirk.

_Gone with Dirk._

When they’d talked about the CIA and Blackwing, Todd had been able to tell that Dirk was on edge. That he hadn’t liked his time with them. But he hadn’t known that they were kept there. He thinks about the way Vogel says “project names”, like he was talking about the scientific names on an insect, clinically, dispassionately, not things treated like they have choices or any real, honest, thought. Like something to be studied.

He’d thought Blackwing had just been a bad working experience. Everyone’s got them, Todd’s had some hideous bosses himself. But that’s not it at all. Turning that conversation over in his head, he can see the evasiveness, how he carefully didn’t tell Todd what the CIA was like for him. That tells him a lot.

Todd realizes he’s standing in the middle of a mostly empty apartment, the CIA possibly after them, and that he’s clutching Dirk’s jacket to his chest, and that he told Farah he’d be just a few minutes. He shakes himself out of it and shoves both the green and purple jackets into the bag. He also throws all the patterned ties he can find in. He doesn’t know which ones he’d want to keep, and Todd barely filled the bag halfway with the clothes he’d wanted, so there’s plenty of room. Dirk doesn’t seem to have brought anything other than clothes and…

“I’m gonna stash you in this and I need you to not flip out, okay?” Todd says, picking the kitten up. “And by ‘flip out’ I mean eat me.”

The kitten somehow manages to convey an unimpressed air, but doesn’t attack him when he zips the bag over her. He comes back down the stairs to where Farah, Amanda, and Vogel are standing. Amanda and Farah are holding hands. Amanda’s arm pressed up against Farah’s.

“Come on,” Farah says. “I know what to do.”

 

They stay at a hotel in Seattle, just in case Dirk or the other members of the Rowdy Three manage to find their way back to the city. They feel like they’d find them somehow. The hotel is Perriman Grand kind of fancy, the elegance and opulence managing to both uncomfortably remind of work and make him antsy about being in a place so nice. When they get outside the doors, Farah holds out a credit card to Todd.

“Your name is Arthur Dent,” she tells him. “You want two rooms. Do you understand? Tell me you understand.”

“I understand.”

Todd does as instructed. When they get to the hotel rooms, they all pile into one. Amanda lies on one of the beds with a _whump._ Vogel lies down next to her.

“So what was that all about?” Todd asks as Farah checks in the bathroom, the shower, under the beds, in the closet.

“Patrick wanted to be ready for any eventuality, so he set up three accounts under fake names in case he, myself, or Lydia ever needed to go on the run. Lydia also had her own special account if she needed it with her name, which is what she’s living on now. Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Tricia McMillan.” Satisfied with her checks, Farah sits on the other bed. “I had to stay in this hotel once with Patrick and Lydia. They know my face and my name, and know I’m not Tricia McMillan. You had to be one of the other two.”

It makes sense. Todd kneels down and zips open his bag. He withdraws the kitten, who’s got the same unimpressed air, but still doesn’t try to scratch him, only meows indignantly.

“Hold up, is that a cat?” Amanda sits up abruptly, staring at the animal in Todd’s hands. “You have a cat?”

“Um, yeah,” Todd answers hesitantly. He knows he and Amanda aren’t on even footing, not even close, but she seems to have forgotten that in the face of a cute cat.

“She’s adorable.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, is that the kitten from the crime scene?” Farah asks. “The one from Dirk’s apartment? The shark kitten?”

“Yeah. I wanted to grab her before we left. It felt important. She’s Dirk’s, really, I’m just… holding her for him.”

“Why’s she a shark kitten?” Vogel asks, also sitting up.

“She sort of… she doesn’t _turn_ into a shark exactly, but she… can be a shark.”

Vogel’s and Amanda’s eyes turn huge.

“Can we pet her?” Vogel asks. Todd holds her out to Amanda, who takes the cat, expression melting.

“She’s so great,” Vogel whispers, looking for the first time like he’s not miserable, his fingers reaching out to scratch the top of her head. “What a great.”

“Does she have a name?” Farah asks, sitting next to Amanda so she too can pet the kitten.

“I-“ Todd has a flash of Dirk in the woods, softly singing a Beatles song to calm the spooked animal in his lap, _the room was designed for echoing_ flickering through the memory, the ringing sound of the word _empty._ “Mary. Her name’s Mary.”

Farah’s fingers curl under Mary’s chin. She doesn’t smile, but looks less anxious, which he thinks might be the best that can be hoped for. “I like it.”

“I want to go get her some cat food. Can I leave, do you think?”

“Yes.” Farah stands. “But I need talk to you in the hallway, we need to discuss strategies if someone comes for you.”

Todd nods. The two of them file into the hall, Farah closing the door behind them. She holds out one of the credit cards without their real names on them. “Use this.”

“Thanks.” He slides it into his pocket. “What’s the strategies?”

“Run, hide. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Todd frowns. “Then why did you say-“

“I wanted to ask you when you were going to tell Amanda.”

Todd’s stomach lurches. “Tell her what?” he asks, although he suspects he knows the answer.

Farah must suspect he knows the answer too, because her eyebrows go up. “Tell her,” she answers calmly. “That you’ve got pararibulitis now, too.”

Todd swallows. “How did you know?”

“You were screaming at something no one else could see and then you couldn’t see it, either, it’s not rocket science.”

“Did. Did she tell you about me? And the- and before?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“You don’t hate me.”

Farah sighs. “My feelings about you are complicated, but my feelings about you aren’t the topic of conversation right now, the topic of conversation is when you’re going to tell your sister.”

“I wasn’t going to tell her yet.”

“Yes, I know, but I wanted to give you the chance to say you would before I told you that you have to or I will.”

“ _What?_ ”

“She’s the most important thing to me. I’m not going to keep this from her.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t _ever_ going to tell her. I hurt her by lying to her, the smart thing to do isn’t to continue lying to her. This just happened today. First time ever, today. I was just… processing.”

Farah folds her arms. “You’re… really?”

“Yeah, I just…” he sighs. “I just wanted to feed that cat and sleep and try not to freak out that my best friend is just… fucking gone somewhere, thanks to an apparently malevolent facet of the fucking government.”

“Okay. I just didn’t want-“

“You didn’t want me hurting Amanda, again, with the things I was lying to her about or wasn’t telling her. And you’d be right.”

“Okay.”

“Are you… can I ask you if you’re okay? Do the complicated feelings preclude that?”

“I don’t know what the rules are yet.” She rubs her forehead. “I’m worried about Dirk.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Me, too.”

She watches him for another moment, then nods. “Go get your cat food.”

“See you, Farah.”

She slips back into the hotel room, leaving Todd on his own. He takes a deep breath, then walks to the elevator, hitting the button. He feels what Amanda talked about, the fear of leaving in case he has another attack in public, and is reminded of how much of an asshole he is, and how this is what he deserves.

The doors ding open. Todd freezes as he’s about to walk through them. The man who was about to leave the elevator does the same. They stay like that until the doors start to close again. The other guy yelps and jumps through them to Todd’s side before they do. They stare at each other for a minute.

“You’re the guy,” Todd says. “The one who was with the girl from before.”

It’s not a lot to go on, but they both know it’s enough. He nods. He’s still wearing the bellhop uniform.

“You’re the guy,” he says. “The one who was with Dirk Gently.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m looking for my friend. She was-“

“Taken,” they say at the same time. They’re silent again, back to staring.

Everything is connected. That’s what Dirk always says. He couldn’t always see whether the connections were good or bad, but he could see that they were there. Todd can’t see what this one is either but it can’t be a coincidence, and he’s got to make a choice.

He takes a deep breath, and a flying leap.

“Want to come pick up cat food with me?” he asks.

 

Ken and Todd come back to the hotel room about twenty minutes later with a plastic grocery bag full of cat food tins, two small plastic bowls, a few metal forks, and some bottles of water. Todd doesn’t know how long they’ll be doing this and he wants to be prepared. Everyone stares at Ken when they sit down on the floor, Mary ambling towards them to investigate.

“Who’s this?” Amanda asks.

“This is Ken.” Todd forks out some cat food into one of the dishes and pours water into the other. “He’s gonna help us find the others.”

“Hi,” Ken says, watching Mary eat.

“You were with that woman.” Farah’s scrutinizing him. “In Patrick Spring’s basement.”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you here?”

“Bart’s gone.” Mary finishes eating and walks up to Ken, looking up at him a little imperiously. He starts petting her. “She didn’t really love hotels, but I think she liked the showers. I thought maybe… she’d go to some in the city if she got away. And that I could find her. Not at the one near where she killed those people, obviously, but, y’know, one close enough. And then I ran into Todd and he asked me to go get cat food with him, so I did.”

“You just asked him to get cat food with you?” Farah asks.

“Wait, where she _killed_ those people?” Amanda demands. 

Ken smiles faintly. “Yeah,” he says fondly. “She did that sometimes. A lot of the time.”

Vogel suddenly sits straight upright. They all look at him. “ _Wait._ ” He scrambles to the ground to sit right in front of Ken. Ken’s only response is to lean backwards slightly. Todd guesses prolonged exposure to Bart, who Ken’s told him all about, will lower your tendency to flinch back from stuff like that. “Tell me where she went.”

“We were driving and then there were these army guys and they had a tank, and she got out of the car and she had a rock, and she told me they couldn’t hurt her but they could hurt me, and they’d hurt me to hurt her, so she told me to run. I didn’t want her to worry about me. So I bolted to try and find her later. Also I’ve seen bullets dodge her. Just… seemed like the smartest move.”

“Bullets dodge her?” Amanda asks. Vogel giggles.

“Of course they do. You found _Marzanna._ ”

“Who?”

Vogel points at himself. “Incubus.” He points in a general manner outside of the room. “Icarus.” He points next to Ken. “Marzanna.”

“Wait, she was in Blackwing, too?”

Vogel’s grinning wide. “The white coats used to say the only constants were her and gravity when she couldn’t get hit.”

“Couldn’t get hit with what?” Ken asks.

“The bullets. The knives. Don’t know why they’d send a tank after her when the flamethrower didn’t even work.”

“They.” Ken looks appalled. Todd knows the feeling. “They shot at her and, and fucking _flamethrowed_ at her?”

Vogel looks genuinely confused. “How else would they know she couldn’t be hurt?”

“Did she _want_ that to happen?”

He looks even more confused. “What does want have to do with Blackwing?”

Todd’s stomach tightens. He opens his mouth to say something, he’s not sure what, but Vogel keeps going. “Trust me, he’s telling the truth. I can tell.” He looks back at Ken. “Don’t worry. They’ve got her, but it’s gonna take a lot more than a tank to kill good old Marzanna.” He sounds downright affectionate.

“I know.” Ken still looks a little sick, but his voice is still calm. “She’s definitely alive.” He holds out his bare right arm. “This is blank.”

The others stare uncomprehending for a moment. Then they realize as one. Amanda shuffles a little closer to Farah, who takes her hand. Vogel’s grin becomes, somehow, even more manic.

“Marzanna got her _Match?_ ” He cackles. “She never thought she would! None of us did!” He shakes his head. “Fucking insane.”

“Why didn’t you think you would?” Ken withdraws his arm.

Vogel’s still grinning wildly. “Because who the fuck would want to be stuck with us?”

 

Amanda and Farah get their own room. Vogel, Ken, and Todd sleep in the other, Vogel and Ken in the beds, Todd on the floor. He doesn’t even put up a fight about it. He can feel the waves of (deserved, he knows) dislike coming off Vogel, and doesn’t want to start a fight. Instead he lies on the floor with a pillow and a jacket thrown over the top half of him like a blanket, Mary curled up asleep next to him. He pets her quietly.

“I hope you’re okay, wherever you are,” he whispers. If the others are awake and hear, they don’t say anything.

 

Farah has contacts from all sorts of places, government or just outside it, people who owe her favors. She says it might take a while, but they can drive around and talk to them, try to find where Blackwing might have taken the others. It’s the only option they’ve got, so of course they go with it.

Farah goes to pick out a car. Vogel and Ken go to get some provisions to store in the car once they’ve got it. Todd and Amanda go to pick up a cat carrier for Mary. They’re going to have to smuggle her into rooms in the duffle bag still, they think, but they need something to put her in on the drive. Todd and Amanda don’t speak, Todd silently inspecting each carrier for what he thinks might be best. He picks one up and then drops it abruptly when the handle rips into his hand, long jagged cuts tearing across his palm. He whimpers slightly and clutches Mary tighter to his chest with his other arm, gritting his teeth and staring at his palm. He sees Amanda watching at him out of the corner of his eye. He looks at her properly and sees in her face that she knows exactly what’s going on.

“Go take Mary and find someplace to sit outside,” she says quietly. “And I will pay for this.”

Todd nods awkwardly and bolts for the door, his hand still bloody and screaming at him. He turns the corner of the Petco and slumps against the wall, gasping and burying his face in Mary’s fur, screwing his eyes shut tight.

He looks up when he hears footsteps and sees Amanda standing in front of him. She puts the cat carrier on the ground next to her, but doesn’t sit down. They stare at each other for a minute.

“Since when?” she asks.

“Since yesterday.”

“When you were screaming on the phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it gone now?”

Todd looks down at his hand. “Yeah.”

“Were you going to tell me? Ever?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“ _Yes._ Ask Farah.”

This doesn’t do anything to help. “ _Farah_ knew?”

“Farah figured it out. She told me to tell you or she would.” This seems to mollify her a little. “I know I deserve this.”

“The guys who took our friends might deserve this. You don’t.” She sits down across from him. “You’re still pretty deep in the shit with me. None of the past twenty four hours changes that.”

“I know.” His fingers are shaking less now that he’s been petting Mary for a while. “I’m sorry.”

Amanda looks tired. “Yeah. I believe you.”

 

Some rules are discovered over the next few days.

-Vogel cannot drive the nondescript white van Farah picked out, because then it suddenly becomes a hell of a lot less nondescript thanks to his driving

-the same rule goes for Amanda

-the only one allowed total control of song choice is Ken

-if anyone asks Todd why he keeps singing “Let It Be” to Mary when he’s tired or right after an attack, they’ll get a shrug and a mumble

 

Ken keeps trying to bust his way into the files for Blackwing, but wherever they are, they’re well hidden. The only thing they find is an email, stating that Colonel Scott Riggins has been replaced by Hugo Friedkin as Director of the Blackwing base with Patricia Wilson overseeing, due to Riggins’s emotional attachment to the subjects in question. Riggins’s current whereabouts are unknown.

“This is one of the only times someone has been too good for me to get in,” Ken mutters. “And I don’t like it.”

“He was in charge when we were there last time,” Vogel says quietly. “He came to try and trick us back. Friedkin was the other guy.”

“Wait, whoa, the crazy guy who held a gun on me?” Amanda demands. Todd’s head snaps up.

“You got a gun held on you?”

“Yeah, but then I came back to your apartment, and all that other shit happened and I didn’t feel like telling you.”

That hurts, but is fair.

“He seemed like a loose fucking cannon,” she continues. “I’m not super fucking thrilled to hear that he’s the boss now.”

No, Todd thinks, Mary’s tail twitching across his arm. Neither is he.

 

Ken’s picked up a pack of Sharpies in the colors of the rainbow somewhere and will often doodle on his arm, little flowers or hearts in all different kinds of colors.

“I can’t tell her that we’re looking for her, or that we’re coming for her,” he tells Todd at one point. “Cause then they might see, and we don’t want to alert them. But, I dunno. They might make her smile, and let know I’m okay.”

“How did you know she was your Match?”

Ken grins. “In the hotel after I showered while we were looking for Dirk, I wrote _the universe is a lot stranger than I ever dreamed_ on my arm, and then from the next room I heard her groan and say ‘why is he ALWAYS writing shit like this’. She’s never been one for the poetic, God-life-is-great stuff.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Todd tilts his head to look at a rose Ken’s written on his arm. It’s a very good drawing. He hasn’t really heard from his own Match lately. He kind of wants to write to see if they’re okay, but also knows the importance of space. It also hasn’t been extremely high on his list of priorities lately. “Wish I could do something like that for Dirk.”

It sounds, suddenly, like Todd wishes Dirk was his Match. Ken gives him an appraising look and Todd flushes, about to try and correct himself when Ken motions to the markers. “Pick out a color.”

Todd grabs a black one. Ken rolls his eyes. “What?”

“Nothing. You’re just really predictable with your color scheme. Okay, draw something on my arm.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Todd thinks about it, then draws a crude star. Ken pulls out a fine tip yellow one, scrawling something below it. Todd reads _thought I’d have Todd take a shot._

“She liked Dirk.” Ken throws the pen back in with the rest. “She’ll tell him that you’re with me and relatively okay, if she gets the chance.”

Todd swallows. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

 

“If it comes down to getting our people out and leaving you behind when we find them,” Vogel tells Todd when it’s just them in the room. “I’m picking them.”

Todd doesn’t look up from the map he’s studying. He’s been waiting for something like this. Vogel hasn’t been subtle about how he feels about Todd. Todd would guess he’s just been waiting for the two of them to be alone together. “Good.”

“What?”

“Get everyone else out first. Blackwing’s a shitshow. I don’t want them in it anymore.”

Vogel’s quiet. Todd raises his head to see him with a wary expression on his face. “I thought you were going along with this to try and convince the drummer girl you’re not a total asshole.”

“I _am_ a total asshole, and I’m not going to try and convince her of anything when I did an asshole thing.” He looks back at the map. “I don't want my friend in there anymore, and I don’t want your friends in there anymore. I don’t want _anyone_ in there anymore, and if that means I get left behind, then I get left behind, and that is what it is.”

Vogel doesn’t say anything until the others get back, but Todd feels his eyes on him the whole time.

 

Todd and Ken talk a lot, but he probably talks to Mary the most out of anything, petting her after attacks, late at night when everyone else is asleep and the exhaustion and the fear and that constant reminder that he has no real way of knowing if Dirk’s alive or not gets louder than normal. Mary tends to stick by his side more than any of the others, although she clearly doesn’t mind getting petted.

“I remember I told you that I wasn’t going to be the one who talked to you because one of us had to be sane,” he mumbles one night. “And that’s true, just as soon as we get Dirk back.”

Mary doesn’t look like she believes him, although it’s possible he could be projecting. Probable, even, considering that she’s a cat, and doesn’t understand him, most likely.

 

“You don't have to hide these from me, you know,” Amanda tells Todd about a month into driving around and looking for them when she finds him hiding in a Wal-Mart stockroom as his feet freeze into ice blocks. He’s got his hands clenched in his pockets, trying to ignore how badly his feet are shaking, wishing he had Mary. “I know you’ve got the disease, I know you have these. Hiding them is stupid.”

“I made you deal with this when I lied about it.”

“Actually, no, you didn’t, you refused to talk about it ever, which I thought at the time was because you didn’t want to worry me, and then I thought you didn’t because you didn’t want to get caught lying, and now I’m pretty sure it was a mixture of both with unknown fucking quantities of either side, which is making it _real_ hard to decide how I feel about you.”

Todd looks away.

“Look, do what you want, I don’t care.” She pushes herself off the wall she’d been leaning on. “I’m just telling you, hiding them is stupid.”

Todd’s feet start to warm up. He gradually unclenches his fists in his pockets and nods, still not looking at her.

 

“I think Vogel might hate me less than he did when we started,” Todd tells Ken at one point.

Ken flutters a stray bit of yarn in front of Mary. She reaches out to grab onto it with her tiny paws. Todd is continually grateful that she seems to forget that she’s a shark a lot of the time. “Amanda feels slightly better about you than when we started, so he probably does too.”

Todd thinks he has a point. He’s not so deluded as to believe that his sister’s ever going to feel about him like she once did, that their relationship will ever be the same. Todd’s not even going to hope she’ll ever forgive him. But she’s started talking directly to him again, isn’t often hostile, and he’ll take what he can get. Farah’s hit a friendlier tone again as well. He never asked her what the complicated feelings were made up of. He never had the right. It’s nice to talk to her again, though.

Ken smiles a little as Mary stretches for the yarn, but there’s something off kilter about his face. Todd frowns. “Are you okay?”

His hand stills. Mary catches the yarn and he lets her victoriously drag it off.

“I got something on my arm today,” he says quietly.

“From Bart?” He doesn’t know why he asks that. Of course it was Bart. There’s no one else it would be.

Ken answers anyway. “Yeah. Her handwriting, so no one wrote it on her.”

“I…” Todd doesn’t know what to say. Asking after what a Match wrote you can be deeply personal in the best circumstances. “Are you okay?”

Ken sits next to him, leaning his back against the hotel room bed too as he crosses his legs. “She didn’t write much. Couldn’t, probably.” He’s started rubbing his arm. “It said _I’m okay, they’re bad, don’t look for me._ She didn’t write back.”

Todd’s stomach lurches. Hesitantly, he puts a hand on Ken’s shoulder. Ken leans his head back against the bed. They don't say anything for a long time.

 

It’s about three and a half months into their search, turning up nothing but dead ends and a lack of information, when Vogel stops in front of Amanda and Farah's hotel room before they return from dinner, face freezing. Farah opens her mouth, clearly to ask, but he holds up a hand, tightening his grip on the baseball bat he takes everywhere with him. Farah pulls out a gun and motions for Todd, Ken, and Amanda to get behind her and Vogel. Right after they do, Vogel slams the door open, Farah close on his heels, and they all tumble into the room.

An older man with a mustache in dark clothes and a baseball cap looks up sharply. Vogel lets out an inarticulate growl.

“Vogel-“ the man starts as Amanda slams the door behind them.

“Shut up,” Vogel snarls. “And _fuck_ you.”

“I came here because I wanted to talk.”

“That’s what you said last time, you fuck, and now my boys are gone, _our_ boys are gone, you’ve taken everybody back-“

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Who is he?” Farah asks Vogel, but Amanda steps forwards a little, ignoring Farah’s hisses at her to get back.

“This is Riggins. You and your _asshole_ friend tried to take me hostage, remember?”

A surge of anger passes over Todd. Farah’s hands tighten on her gun. Riggins doesn’t take his eyes off it. “I do remember Friedkin doing that, yes. If you recall, I’m the one who told him to back off.”

“Yeah, and I’m so fucking grateful to you for that.” Todd’s not sure if he’s ever seen her this pissed. Todd can feel the itch to strangle him in his own palms. “Where are the others? Where did you take them?”

“I didn’t take them anywhere.”

“What did you do to Bart?” Ken’s voice is quiet, but no less furious.

“I’m telling you, I haven’t done anything. Friedkin and Wilson took over and they’ve been looking for me ever since, but I’ve been looking for all of you. I know where they took your friends.”

Everyone stiffens.

“Why should we believe you?” Farah demands. Riggins motions to a large black messenger bag on the bed.

“That’s got everything I could grab before I ran, files, the location, a map of the facility.”

“What do you want for it?” Farah’s voice is icy. “Because right now I’d like very much to shoot you and take the bag.”

“Because-“ Riggins takes a small step towards her and Amanda lurches forwards.

“Get any closer to her,” she snaps. “And I don’t care what you have to tell us, I will kill you anyway.” Even in the situation they’re dealing with, Todd sees Farah flush. Riggins stops.

“Because this facility is the same layout as the last one,” he says steadily. “And I know the weak spots, and I can convince the CIA that this is all Wilson and Friedkin’s fault when you’ve gotten them out so you can all return to your lives.”

They look at Vogel, who purses his lips.

“He’s being honest,” he answers. “No traps, no tricks.”

“I vote we let him help.” Ken’s studying Riggins almost clinically. “I want Bart back.”

“I want to kill him,” Amanda says. “But also to get the others out.”

“Yeah.” Todd’s throat is dry. “Me, too.”

“Vogel.” Farah hasn’t moved. “Your call.”

Vogel’s quiet.

“Yeah,” he finally answers. “But I reserve the right to kick the shit out of him if he ends up betraying us.”

Farah lowers the gun. “Deal.”

 

Todd spends a lot of time over the next week staring at Dirk’s file.

He’ll sit on the bed in his room (and isn’t that weird, that he gets to have his own room again?) in the home base that Riggins provided, some place up in the mountains of Montana that they’ll return to and hide out in while Riggins tries to clear their names, looking at the file at the foot of the mattress. Farah, Ken, and Amanda have already read all the files. Vogel hasn’t, because he doesn’t have to.

Mary hops up on the bed. She looks inquisitively at the file, seems to decide it holds no interest for her if she can't eat it or it can't pet her, and sits expectantly in front of Todd. He picks her up and starts petting her.

“I think that cat’s an extension of you now,” Farah says, coming into the room. 

“Possibly,” Todd answers distantly.

She sits next to him, back against the headboard. She holds her hand out to Mary. When she sniffs and licks at it, Farah starts scratching her.

“Yes.”

“Do I need to know what's in it?”

“I don't know.” She moves to pet Mary under the chin. “I like to know everything possible, so it was important for me to know it. I don't know about you.”

“I’m not going to like what's in it, am I?”

“Not remotely.” Mary curls back into Todd, so Farah withdraws her hand. “You're not going to like Riggins very much, either. But we need him, so don't kill him.”

“I already don’t like Riggins.”

“Trust me. You’re going to like him a hell of a lot less.”

“I don't want…” he sighs. “It doesn't feel right. But if there's something in there that could matter when I need it… then I should read it.”

“It's up to you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Todd’s quiet for a moment, then bumps her shoulder with his. 

“Thanks for not running away screaming when I said you looked good in my clothes,” he says, instead of saying “thank you for if not forgiving me for what I did to your Match, then at least talking to me again”.

She snorts. “Thanks for not saying it more than once.”

 

After she leaves, Todd picks up the file. Takes a deep breath and opens it.

There's two photos of Dirk there, paperclipped onto official looking documents. The one on the right is a recent one, from what looks like a grainy security camera shot, in his yellow jacket, waiting for a bus. The one on the left looks more official, like a passport photo. The child in it is wearing a giant blue sweater and beaming, eyes bright, and Todd can almost hear him (in his adult voice, of course: he has no frame of reference for what Dirk might have sounded like as a child) asking the person taking the picture questions about the camera they're using. He can't be any more than eleven or twelve. He picks the photo up, smiling faintly at it. He wonders, a little, how Blackwing might have gotten their hands on it. It couldn’t have come in the passport he came with. Then he remembers they’re the CIA, and they can get their hands on anything.

Todd slides the photo back under the paper clip and pulls the rest of the file up.

_ICARUS_

_CURRENT ALIAS: DIRK GENTLY_

_BIRTH NAME: SVLAD CJELLI_

Todd traces the birth name thoughtfully. He hadn’t known it wasn’t Dirk, but it makes sense, somehow. He starts scanning the rest of the document. The definition of his powers has a lot of long words in it that from what Todd can tell boils down to “we think he sees patterns in the universe, but fucked if we know”. They seemed to think he was promising, at any rate. 

Todd’s not sure whether or not to read with any attention to detail. He still feels a little trepidatious reading all this, so he’s kind of just letting his eyes flit from thing to thing, until he stops on one sentence.

_Subject’s abilities seem to have grown since his entry into the program at age ten._

Todd frowns. That can’t be right. He pulls the page up close to his eyes to see if maybe it’s a typo of some kind. It doesn’t look like one. He turns the page. It’s printed out, but someone has to have mistyped somehow. He can’t see any evidence of it, so he scans the rest of the paper, looking.

The age is repeated a couple times. It states that Dirk went into Blackwing at ten years old, right from an orphanage, shortly after the death of his mother. Often enough that it can’t be a mistake.

Todd thinks back to asking Dirk if it had been that long ago since he’d broken out, and he’d answered “long enough”.

According to the file, it’s sixteen years ago. 

He was ten.

Todd swallows, and starts to read the file, carefully and from the beginning.

 

When Todd storms into the living room of the place they’ve been using as their planning room, both Riggins and Farah must be able to read him pretty quickly. Farah he understands, because she’d left right before he’d picked up the file, and so must be able to guess what caused this. Riggins he’s less sure about, but then again, maybe being a lying, child-experimenting CIA shitstain gives one special precognitive fucking powers, he doesn’t know.

Regardless, when Todd stalks into the room, Riggins immediately goes into the back of it, and Farah instantly stands in front of Todd, hands on his chest.

“Todd,” she says quickly. “Todd, Todd. Don’t be stupid.”

“You read it.” Todd’s hands are shaking. He wants to curl one into a fist and drive it into Riggins’s face. “You know.”

“I do know. But this is not the most productive avenue to take, long term.”

“He was-“ He cuts himself off from finishing with so young. He glares at Riggins, who’s still in the back of the room, looking at Todd warily. He feels almost like he did underground what feels like forever ago, feeling the electricity coursing through his body as he held onto Dirk’s hand to open the door. The fury feels like it’s sparking at his fingertips.

“I know, and after this we don’t ever have to see him again, but for now, keep your shit together.”

Todd tightens his jaw. He can feel Amanda, Ken, and Vogel watching him silently.

“If you ever fuck up when it comes to Dirk again,” he tells Riggins. “I’m feeding you to my fucking cat.”

Riggins still looks leery. Good. “Understood.”

Todd strides back out, not looking at anybody.

 

Todd’s lying facedown on the bed when he hears the door open.

“Yeah?” he mumbles through the pillow. 

The bed dips next to him. “Mary was crying at your door,” Amanda says. “I didn’t want her to break it down.”

“She’s too spoiled, she could stand to learn to wait.” Todd sits up and pulls her into his lap anyway. 

Amanda has a slight smile on her face. It’s the first time she’s smiled in his direction in months. “Yeah, and whose fault is that?”

“I know.”

The smile leaves to be replaced by uncertainty. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Cause you seem… not that.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t see the file coming.” Todd leans his head back against the wall. “I still want to punch Riggins.” A lot. He can feel the itch to curve his hand into a ball tingling in his palms.

“I feel like that’s not so much a feeling as a permanent state of mind.”

He feels his lips twitch a little. “Fair enough.”

“Look, I don’t really like you very much right now, but you’re still my brother, and I love you whether I like that or not, and I’m sorry that you’re so…” she waves a hand vaguely. “That.”

“Thanks.” He tries to make it clear in his tone that he means it, but he feels drained, so he’s not sure how successful he is.

Amanda stands up and hovers awkwardly. “I’m gonna go back that way. You… be okay, I guess.” She gives him finger guns and walks out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Todd’s quiet for a moment.

“You’d eat Riggins, right?” he asks Mary. “If I asked you to? Cause I still might.”

Mary looks up at him.

“He was a kid. You know, when he said he’d been with the CIA, I thought he’d have been an adult, at least, Christ, I thought he’d be able to make decisions legally for himself. How did they even, how did he even agree to come, what kind of _fucking_ irresponsible adults let him go with strange government men? But he was just a _kid_. Who’d just lost his mom, for Christ’s sake, he couldn’t have been thinking clearly. How’d, how, who takes kids back to facilities and runs experiments on what they can do, who _does_ that?”

The file had detailed the things Dirk had asked for as he got older. Better blankets. Better pillows. Better food. Music. Friends. He hadn’t gotten any of them. Suddenly, Todd thinks of a ten year old in a small room with only a bed, singing to make himself feel better. A lump rises in his throat.

“It’s bullshit,” he whispers. “It’s such bullshit.”

His voice does something funny on the last word. He shakes his head sharply, like maybe it’ll stop how his face feels a little like it’s stinging.

For a while Todd just pets Mary. Running his fingers through her fur repeatedly until his breathing balances out. He blinks, vision a little blurry.

He reaches over to the nightstand and grabs the Sharpie on it. He hesitates for a moment, looking at his arm. It’s going to be an unusually vulnerable thing for him to do, but he feels like he needs to do it, needs the reminder. He writes the sentences carefully on his arm.

_It’s going to be okay._

He hasn’t heard from his Match in a while. It’s not high on his list of priorities right now. Just the act of writing it out on his arm has brought him some sense of comfort. Maybe, he thinks as he turns over in bed to take a nap, it’ll bring his Match some, too, wherever they are and whatever they’re dealing with in their life right now, if they need it.

 

Todd tries to avoid being in the same room alone as Riggins, but he couldn't do it forever, and eventually he’s stuck scrutinizing a map of the facility so he can memorize the way to the cells from their point of entry while Riggins inventories their weapons to make sure they have all the ones they need while the others work on separate tasks.

“I understand you don’t like me,” Riggins says suddenly after nothing but quiet. Todd takes a deep breath.

“I’m glad.”

“But I want to try and explain to you why I did what I did.”

Todd doesn’t look up. “Don’t bother.”

Riggins presses on anyway. “They were so _special_ , you see. So interesting. So unique.”

Todd grits his teeth. “I am well aware of how special they are, Colonel.”

“I just wanted to understand them.”

“So you put them under a microscope and wouldn’t let them leave it?”

“Mistakes were made. But I want someone to understand my reasoning.”

“I don’t care about your reasoning.” Todd’s not really seeing the map in front of him. “You fucked up. Your reasoning doesn’t matter when you look at your actions.”

“I care very deeply for Dirk, Todd.”

“I don’t care about that, either.”

Riggins sighs, obviously frustrated. “You know, I read about you for background when it became clear Dirk was going to become attached to you. I know the lies you told. You’ve fucked up, too.”

Rage rips through Todd, white hot. He spins on Riggins. “I have fucked up _immensely_ and _powerfully_.” His voice is just short of a roar. “I have not _imprisoned and experimented on children in a government_ ** _fucking_** _facility_ fucked up.” He shoves his finger into Riggins’s chest. “I _saw_ what Dirk looked like when you cornered him in my apartment with the fucking lackey you let go rampant, I _saw_ how badly it shook him and maybe I didn’t fucking get what it meant at the time but I knew something bad had happened, so you don’t get to come to me telling me how much Dirk means to you and trying to get me to understand why you jailed a bunch of people because you wanted to stick them with pins in a display case like some goddamn _butterflies_ just so you can try to absolve yourself of blame and guilt. I’m not interested, all right? After we get the others out, after you make sure Dirk can go wherever he wants without looking over his shoulder the rest of his life, I want you to have _fuck all_ to do with me. So do your job and keep your mouth shut and leave me the fuck alone.”

Todd turns back to the map. They spend the rest of the time working in silence.

 

Todd’s clamping his jaw against the attack in his room, the feeling of brands sinking white hot into his shoulders too unbearable to keep back the tiny whimpers, body feeling too tight for him to feel okay holding Mary without worrying he’d hurt her, when his door opens. Vogel steps into the room and puts a hand on his forehead. The pain suddenly goes. Todd stares at him, knowing that he’s always done this for Amanda, but it having never once occurred to him to ask for himself.

“You’ve chased the fuckers around for months to get us back,” Vogel says. “And you were ready to punch out Riggins cause of what he did to us. Heard you shouting at him, too. Ain’t a lot of people willing to do that. Don’t necessarily like you, but can respect you’re on our team.”

Todd swallows and nods. “Thanks.”

Vogel shrugs and flits back out of the room. Todd sits heavily on the bed, petting Mary when she crawls into his lap.

 

Riggins isn’t going with them to break the others out, one month after they met him, almost five months of their friends being locked away, which Todd is grateful for. They decide to bring Mary with them, though, which makes Todd anxious even knowing that she can take care of herself just fine. He doesn’t say anything, though. If things go poorly, he’d still rather have Dirk than Mary. He keeps glancing at her in the passenger seat of the car they’d bought for this plan. Ken’s taking the motorcycle he’ll need, Amanda and Farah in the van.

Their plan is simple. Cause a diversion, break into the base during that diversion, find their friends, and get out while everyone is escaping and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Creating the distraction, fortuitously, coincides with both a way to get into the base and something that will make Amanda happy, which is proved pretty well when she cackles as she throws the plunger and blows a hole in the side of the base, far enough away from the cells that they’re not very worried that they’ll have hurt any subjects.

They run into the building, alarms flashing and sirens wailing. They can hear the sound of people shouting and running around, the beginnings of chaos. Farah glances at Todd. “Time to split up. You’ll be okay?”

“I’ll figure it out.” Todd holds Mary up. “I have a shark.”

Farah nods. “Be careful.”

Todd only vaguely remembers where he’s going as he tears through corridors. Right now he’s going for where he hears the most noise. Experience tells him that’s where Dirk will be.

It proves that perhaps that was a poor decision, however, when he skids to a stop to see a large crowd of guards.

“Oh,” he says as they all withdraw guns and nightsticks. “Hi.”

“Drop the animal and put your hands up!”

Todd pauses. “You want me… to let go of the cat?”

“ _Now!_ ”

“Okay.” Todd looks down at Mary and prays she’s going to know what he wants her to do. “I’m going to put the cat down… _now._ ”

Todd throws Mary in their direction and steps back.

If it were any other situation, he might feel bad as Mary flies out of her skin at the now screaming guards. But he’s thinking of reading Dirk’s file all over again, so he just puts his hands in his jeans pockets and waits for her to be done.

When she returns to her body, there’s blood on the walls and on the floor. She walks up to him and he kneels down.

“Mrow.”

“Good job, Mary.” He smiles at her. “Good kitty.”

Mary puts a paw on his cheek. He’s a little surprised to feel that it’s wet. She must have stepped in one of the blood puddles.

“That’s your cat?”

Todd looks up. The woman from the Spring mansion who he now knows to be Bart jogs onto the other side of the pools of blood and corpses from what looks like a side hallway. She’s wearing flat gray. Some of the blood from the guards is on the hem of her pants. She’s staring at Mary with a vaguely awed expression on her face.

“Um, yeah,” he says. “Sometimes. Other times she’s a shark.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Todd feels his brow crease. “Who-“ he looks over his shoulder. No one there. “Who were you talking to, then?”

Another figure hesitantly pops out of the same hallway. Todd stands suddenly and recognizes dimly how strange it is to see him in gray, as he tries to navigate the blood pools. He’s the sort of person that lives in Todd’s mind sporting permanent, flying technicolor.

“Why is there always so much blood?” Dirk mutters. “Every time, there’s always blood.”

“You get used to it.” Bart looks a little amused as she watches him tiptoe around the blood in washed out slippers. “You want me to carry you? I always get blood on me anyway.”

“No, thank you, I’ve got it.” Dirk makes it to the edge of the corpse field, and stops abruptly, looking a little uncertain. He and Todd stand in silence for a moment.

“You know, I’m used to unexpected,” Dirk says suddenly. “It’s sort of become a thing in my life, but I have to admit, I didn’t anticipate seeing you. Again or at all, really, fortune smiling on me would involve all of you being all right and these people not dragging you into anything on my account.”

Todd feels a familiar frisson of anger, like the kind that showed up when he’d finally cracked Dirk’s file open. 

“You should have,” he answers. “It’s not like we were gonna leave you behind. We were always coming to get you, even if it took a while to find you. We don’t leave friends behind.”

Dirk has that same expression he’d had in the woods when Todd had told him he was his friend, the one of naked shock and dawning delight. He doesn’t bother trying to disguise it this time. “Oh.”

Todd shrugs awkwardly. “Yeah.”

Dirk looks happier than he had a few moments ago, but there is still something painfully tentative about it, enough that Todd internally sighs and goes _ah, fuck it_.

He strides forwards and pulls Dirk into a hug. Dirk flails for a second before righting himself, wrapping his arms around Todd tightly. It occurs to him that Dirk probably doesn’t do hugs that often, and tries to hold on just as tight.

“It’s good to see you,” Todd whispers.

“It’s good to see you, too.” He can hear Dirk’s smile and it prompts one of his own. “Even if it’s in this fascist hellscape.”

“Hey.”

Todd and Dirk pull back a little. Bart’s by their side, pants now thoroughly stained with red.

“We’re still stuck inside of the fascist hellscape,” she points out.

“Good point.” Dirk lets go of Todd, seemingly reluctantly. “Did you come by yourself?”

“No, everyone’s here.” Todd turns to her. “You’re Bart, right?”

She looks at him warily. “…yeah?”

“Ken’s here, too.”

Her eyes widen. “But I told him not to.”

“He-“ Todd catches himself before he says _loves._ He’s not sure what conversations the two of them have had yet. “Cares about you, a lot. You being scared was only going to make him even more determined to find you.”

It is, a small part of him traitorously thinks, something like what he feels about Dirk. He quashes the thought.

Bart grins, eyes wet. She reaches down to an arm lying in the hall (it’s impossible to tell which guard it belonged to) and tugs the nightstick from his hand. “What’re we waiting for?”

“Can I hold the kitten?” Dirk asks.

“Yeah, sure. Her name’s Mary.”

Dirk bends over and picks her up. He beams at her. “Hello, Mary.”

Todd pulls the baseball bat out of the bag on his back. “Come on. Let’s go.”

 

Todd hands Bart a Sharpie while they walk through the halls. “Tell Ken we’re all together.”

Bart takes the Sharpie right as a spray of bullets whizzes by. The three of them instantly flatten themselves against the wall.

“Bart,” Dirk whispers as a fleet of guards start rushing down the hall towards them. “Do you think you can take care of them?”

“Not if I have to worry about you people.” She finishes writing the message on her arm. “There’s a weapons storage room a corridor down from here, I saw it when I came in. Go there and pick up some stuff. I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m not particularly excited to leave you,” Dirk says. She grins at him.

“Don’t worry. Universe is righting itself. I’ll be fine.” She holds up the Sharpie. “Can I have this pen? I don’t have anything stabby. I didn’t even get to stab anyone with a pen the last time I had one, I had to make sure Ken knew not to come before anything and then they wrestled it from me. ”

“Go for it.”

Her grin widens. “Thanks,” she says, shooing them off, already turning towards where the bullets are coming from with a gleam in her eyes.

 

The weapons storage room has a keypad lock, which Todd really should have seen coming.

“Do you think that if I hit it with my bat it’ll do anything?” he asks Dirk a little hopefully. “Like in movies and shit?”

Dirk shakes his head. He shifts Mary to one hand and bends over, studying the keypad.

“They didn’t think very much of us, the guards.” His tone is matter of fact. “They didn’t have any real belief in our intelligence. Certainly not mine and Bart’s and the Rowdy Three’s, anyway. So sometimes they would mention things in front of us without really thinking we’d know what it meant. Like…”

Dirk’s finger hovers over the keypad for just a moment, then rapidly punches out four numbers, 2-1-2-1. The door clicks and he pushes. It opens, and he beams triumphantly. 

“Like one telling the other the new combination to the weapons rooms when the passwords changed over,” he finishes, sounding pleased with himself.

Todd swings the bat over his shoulder. “Not bad.”

“ _I_ thought so.”

The weapons room is absolutely packed with things that aren’t even traditionally weapons. There’s half of a wall of various kinds of sledgehammers. 

“Look at all those guns.” Dirk reaches out to poke one.

“Don’t do that, you’ll end up setting it off somehow.”

“Won’t.”

Todd raises his eyebrows. Dirk’s lips twitch.

“Might not,” he allows. Todd accepts that’s as good as he’ll get and turns back to the guns.

“Farah’s gonna lose her mind.”

“She’s really here?”

“I told you, everyone’s here.”

Dirk smiles and shakes his head.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he murmurs. “We’d heard that there were intruders in the base, so the guards were trying to get us back to our cells, and they shunted us into that side hallway, and then suddenly there it was. My cat. Not when she was a cat, obviously, when she was a shark. And then there _you_ were.” He grins. “You’re better than a cat.”

“Thank you?” Todd looks up at the single lightbulb lighting the room. It’s glowing a faint gold, as opposed to literally all the other lighting he’s seen in here, entirely fluorescent. “Is this the only example of a lightbulb here that isn’t… cold and kind of white and unpleasant?”

“As far as I’m aware. That bulb is the closest thing to the actual color of sunlight I’ve seen in five months. Traditionally speaking,” he adds thoughtfully. “I know sunlight doesn’t _actually_ have color because, you know, it’s light, but. As close to the actual color of the sun, I suppose I should have said. Blackwing’s not that big on windows.”

Todd swallows. “I read your CIA file.” It stumbles out of him, the thing he hadn't been sure how to phrase.

“Oh.”

Todd doesn’t look away from the lightbulb. He doesn’t want to look at Dirk’s face. “I didn’t know if I should. Cause I’m pretty sure you’ve had enough taken from you and I didn’t want to contribute to that. But I thought… maybe I would need something in it to make sure you’d get out. So I did it. And if you’re pissed, I get that, and you don’t have to talk to me, and that’s… okay. It’s good.”

They’re both quiet for a moment. Todd’s stomach is twisting a little and his palms are sweaty.

“Well,” Dirk says slowly. “I’m not going to lie, I’m not… ecstatic about the idea. But you read it to try and help me get out. Wasn’t like you read it for kicks, you know, didn’t read it to point and laugh. So it’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

“Point and-“ Todd looks at him finally. He looks surprisingly calm. “Dude. Why the hell would I- there wasn’t anything _funny-_ dude.”

“The thing I don’t understand, though,” Dirk continues, like he hasn’t heard Todd’s objections. “Is how you even got your hands on it? Where would you even _find_ my file?”

Here’s the other part of the conversation Todd doesn’t want to have but really has to. “We got it from-“ The baseball bat suddenly grows vines that wind around the hand he’s holding it with. The vines constrict. Abruptly giant thorns grow from them, embedding themselves in his hand. He yells and releases the bat. The vines vanish as soon as he does, but the cuts and blood from the thorns remain, and he can feel the pain from it coming in waves. “ _Shit_.”

“What is it?” Dirk looks worried, approaching Todd. He takes the blood soaked hand with the one not holding Mary, turning it over in his. “What’s happened, I don’t see, is everything okay?”

None of the blood seems to be staining Dirk’s hand. Todd grits his teeth.

“A lot’s changed since you were gone,” he tells Dirk.

Dirk frowns. “Todd, what-“

Someone skids into his vision. He looks to the doorway to see Vogel stop abruptly in it. The other three of the Rowdies stop behind him.

“Got the agonies again?” Vogel asks, motioning to Todd’s hand.

“Yeah.”

He gestures imperiously. “Give.”

Todd tugs his hand out of Dirk’s and hands it over to Vogel, a little reluctantly. Dirk’s hold had felt careful and gentle, and he’d liked it more than he’d admit to. His hand glows blue, and then all the blood, cuts, and pain are gone.

“Thanks.”

Vogel looks behind him at the Rowdy Three. “He’s weird,” he tells them. “And complicated. And I don’t always like him. But he’s on our side.”

Todd picks up his baseball bat, avoiding eye contact. Dirk looks even more concerned than before.

“What’s-“

Bart rushes into view with Ken, her hand holding his tightly. Ken looks happier than Todd’s seen him since he’s known him. Farah and Amanda join them.

“Hello, Amanda! Hi, Farah!” Dirk beams. “I’d hug you, but I’ve got this cat.”

Amanda looks at Todd. “You’re letting other people hold her now?”

“I let people hold onto her all the time!” Todd feels a little nettled. “She just likes me.”

She turns to Dirk with a grin. “It’s great to see you and all, but that cat is pretty much an extension of Todd at this point, so it’s a pretty big deal.”

Farah smiles at Dirk. “Hi, Dirk.” She looks at Todd. “Amanda started a fire.”

“She _what?_ ”

“It was a little one!”

“Big enough that we should probably go even sooner than we intended.”

 

“Amanda and I are taking a van with the Rowdy Three,” Farah says briskly as they stride through the halls. “Bart’s going with Ken on his motorcycle. Dirk, you’re taking a car with Todd.”

“Where’re we going?” Bart asks.

“Safehouse. We all have maps. We’re gonna lie low there until we get the all clear.”

“All clear from who?” Martin asks. Farah abruptly stops at an intersection of four hallways.

“We need to go down this one-“ she points to the left. “Bart and Ken need to go straight, and Dirk and Todd need to go right.”

“See you back at the house,” Amanda says. She kisses Dirk’s cheek and punches Todd’s arm. Todd and Farah nod at each other, and then they’re gone.

“Good luck,” Ken tells Todd.

“You too.”

“Be careful, Gently.” Bart nudges Dirk’s foot with hers. Dirk nudges back.

“I’m _very_ good at careful.”

Todd gives him a look. “No, you’re not.”

“I _can_ be.”

Ken grins. The two of them vanish.

Dirk and Todd jog down the corridor.

“What kind of car did you bring?” Dirk asks brightly. “Anything fun?”

“You once traded a Corvette for a Jeep, we both know you don’t care about fun when it comes to cars.”

“Are you _still_ giving me shit for that, that was a _practical_ decision-“ Dirk rounds the corner and stops abruptly. “Oh.”

Todd stops next to him. There’s a blond guy in a suit between them and the door. He’s pointing a gun at them, looking furious and vaguely familiar to Todd.

“Did you bring a _cat?_ ” he asks. “Why the fuck do you have a _cat_ here?”

It clicks for Todd, remembering the photo that Riggins had shown them. “You’re Director Friedkin,” he says, gripping the baseball bat a little tighter. “Would you like to find out why we have a cat?”

He looks confused. “What?”

“Don’t ask Friedkin questions.” Dirk looks frightened enough that Todd’s starting to have some more than negative feelings towards Friedkin, even more than he already had, but he knows for a fact that fear doesn’t seem to have much to do with shutting Dirk up. “Even when they’re ones he knows the answers to, he doesn’t have enough brainpower to formulate replies.”

“Yes.” Todd’s watching him closely. “So I’ve heard.”

“I have _plenty_ of brainpower. I have _intelligence._ ” Friedkin’s shaking with anger. “You have a _cat._ ”

“Cats are smart,” Dirk counters with a frown.

“I already don’t like you,” Todd snaps. “Don’t add insulting my cat to it.”

“Did you do this?” Friedkin gestures wildly with the other hand. “Is this _your_ fault?”

“I had help. You’re not well liked.”

“Where are they?”

“Gone. Far away from you.” Todd actually has no idea how far the others are at this point, but he relishes the horror on Friedkin’s face when he says it. “You know there’s no way out of this for you, right? Shooting us isn’t gonna fix that. This is all your fault.” He grins, feeling a little like a glowing ball of vindictive, vengeful pleasure.

“You-“ Friedkin points at him. “I knew you were a fucking weirdo, okay, you might not be a _monster_ like Icarus and the other fucking monsters-“ the bat feels like it’s pressing insistently into his fist at the way Dirk flinches a little with the word “monster”. Todd remembers calling Dirk that himself what feels like forever ago, and a wave of guilt slams into him hard, making him want to throw up. “But you brought a _cat_ and a _baseball bat_ to a CIA base, you broke onto _government fucking property_ with a pet and sports equipment, I _knew_ you were a fucking weirdo.”

Todd shelves the nausea. For later, for later, for now, deal with him. “I’ve been called worse.”

Friedkin shakes his head sharply. “I can’t believe it,” he mutters. “Icarus, man, he was _no_ help to us at all, never listened, never did anything, except for when we took him in, he told us someone would come for him, hasn’t said it for fucking months, but he still said it.” He points at Dirk, who takes a step back. “ _That’s what you had to be right about?_ ” he yells.

“I didn’t think I would be, after a while,” Dirk says faintly.

Todd takes a step forwards. “This is all your fault,” he repeats. “You’re fucked whether you shoot us or not. So just let us go. Save your bullets.”

“No, no, no, see.” Friedkin grins a little desperately. “We’re the _CIfuckingA._ We will _find_ you. You can run from here, but we’re gonna hunt you down and we’re gonna bring these fuckers back in, and you are going to _suffer_ for this.”

“You sound kind of like my algebra teacher in high school every time I cut class.” Oh hey, look at that, Todd’s a smartass when he’s angry and under pressure. “He wasn’t very frightening, either.”

Friedkin swallows. “You’re right,” he mutters. “You’re right, you’re right, I’m fucked. But maybe… maybe I’m less fucked.” He looks at Todd shrewdly. He wonders how often he has that expression. From what Riggins has said, he doesn’t seem that smart. “I’ll offer you a deal.”

“A deal?”

“Look, if I go back to my boss just by myself, it won’t end well for me. But if I bring her back with a subject… I’m better off. I’ve still got one. So give me Icarus. Give me Icarus, and I won’t be able to find you, or your friends, or even your crazy fucking sister. You won’t get any retribution for this. You’ll just disappear, as far as we’re concerned. All I need is Icarus, and we won’t come looking for you.”

Todd doesn’t talk as much as Dirk, but speechlessness doesn’t come naturally to him. Right now, however, against the surge of disgust and shock, Todd can’t find any words. He gawks at Friedkin, who’s starting to look more and more hopeful the longer Todd’s silent. 

“It’s a good deal.”

Todd turns his gaping to Dirk, who doesn’t even look disappointed or worried. Just resigned.

“You and all the others for me. That’s pretty good math.”

Todd’s mouth works for a moment in fury before he finds his tongue. “ _No._ No, that’s not what that quiet was about, that quiet was about me not being able to believe that I could come at all close to hating anyone as much as I hate Riggins, but it turns out all it took was some _fuck_ in a cheap suit-“ he stabs a finger at Friedkin. “To prove me wrong.”

“Riggins?” Dirk says weakly.

“How the _fuck_ do you know who Riggins is?” Friedkin demands, looking shaken, although not as shaken as Dirk.

Todd bares his teeth at him in a grin. “He sold you up the river,” he tells him. “Bringing the total of things I like about him up to two. And right now, that is two more than you.”

“If you don’t give me Icarus, I just kill you, _and_ your fucking cat.”

“My fucking cat could take you.” He’s seething. “You’re offering to fucking _buy_ my best friend, you think I’ll say _yes_ , and you think telling me you’ll kill me and my cat if I don’t agree to this will what, sweeten the pot? Fuck you. _Fuck_ you. I’m leaving, Dirk’s coming with me, and I hope the CIA buries you so deep you’re choking on dirt until you die.”

“You’re not going _anywhere,_ I have a _gun_ , you have a baseball bat and-“

“And a cat, yeah, you seem very keen that I know that.” Todd holds out the bat to Dirk, who shifts Mary to the crook of his arm to take it. “Set her on him if this goes poorly.”

“Set her on- if _what_ goes- Todd, Todd-“

Dirk jerks like he wants to grab Todd’s arm despite both hands being full, but Todd’s already storming towards Friedkin. 

“Get back!” Friedkin yells. “I have a gun!”

Admittedly, it’s not Todd’s smartest plan. But he’s so pissed that everything’s a little red and fuzzy around the edges, so all his logic’s taken a backseat. Friedkin takes a shot, but the gun jams. He looks down at it, and then up at Todd, in time for him to drive his fist into Friedkin’s nose. Friedkin yelps and drops to the floor.

“You broke my fucking nose!”

“Cool.” He kneels down. “Dirk’s not a monster. My sister isn’t crazy. Have fun explaining to your boss that you got taken down by some weirdo with a pet and sports equipment.” He straightens and turns to Dirk, who looks a little gobsmacked, mouth hanging open slightly. “Let’s go.”

“I- yes. Going. Good idea.” Dirk steps over Friedkin. Hesitates. Kicks him and nods when he grunts. Turns back to Todd to hand him his baseball bat. “Where did you park, exactly?”

 

Todd tosses the baseball bat in the backseat of the car. “Thanks for holding onto that for me. Amanda let me borrow one of hers and I wouldn’t have heard the end of it if I’d lost it.”

“No trouble.”

He glances in the rearview mirror. “Well, it looks like that fire Amanda set really took, so if you want to see it burning, now’s your chance.”

Dirk shakes his head. “I’m all set, thank you.”

Todd drives off from the base. There’s no one following them, which seems good.

“How far away is the safehouse place?”

Todd thinks it over. “About four hours.”

“Do you want me to drive? You’ve got to be tired.”

Todd raises his eyebrows. “If you’re driving, I’m going to be anxious.”

“True, but we’ll get there in three and not four.”

“In one piece?”

“I do most of the time.”

Todd grins. “I’ll drive.”

“Whatever keeps you sane.” Dirk’s quiet for a moment. “So, um. How does Riggins enter into this?”

Todd shrugs a lot more cavalierly than he feels. “He came to us wanting to help get you out.”

“What did he ask for in return?”

“Nothing.”

“ _Nothing?_ ”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like him at all.”

The matter-of-factness to Dirk’s tone makes Todd’s hands tighten on the wheel. “We asked. He just wanted to get you out.”

“He must have _really_ hated Friedkin.”

“He claims he wants to set things right.”

Dirk laughs. It’s a tight, mirthless sound. “Oh, I doubt it. So if that he sold Friedkin out is one thing you like about him. What’s the second?”

“I may hate him, but without him, we wouldn’t have gotten any of you out. That and the Friedkin thing is all he's got going for him.”

Dirk shifts a little. “Why do you hate Riggins so much? What did he do to you?”

Todd grits his teeth a little. “I don’t like anyone who experiments on children,” he replies, voice clipped, leaving it at that for now but willing to continue if Dirk keeps at asking.

“Oh.” Dirk sounds a little startled. “That’s. Yes. I suppose that’s fair, yes.” He’s quiet again. “Why didn’t you take the deal?”

“Why didn’t-“ Todd takes a deep breath. “You’re my friend. You’re my best friend, and that means I’m not trading you to some- some _fucking_ creep in a CIA base who’s going to experiment on you or some bullshit, I don’t know, the point is, I’m not doing that, that’s not bullshit I will be engaging in.”

“That would have been everybody, though. Farah, Amanda, you. All of you. Just for me. That’s-“

“Good math, yeah, I know, you said.” Todd finally takes his eyes from the road to look at Dirk. He doesn’t look remotely concerned, just genuinely curious. “I’m not trading you for _shit._ That’s not how this works. I don’t care if he offered all of us and my own private island and, and a new guitar, okay. That’s not how this works. _Fuck_ math. And don’t let him get in your head and make you believe that I should have agreed, cause that’s bullshit, and I’m just-“ he’s getting too agitated to talk. He takes a deep breath. “You leave when you want to. Not because you believe any of us will be better off, because we won’t hold with that shit and we’ll go to bat for you.” He glances at the bat in the backseat. “Literally, I guess.”

“Oh.” Dirk’s face is almost comically stunned. “Well. That’s. Thank you.”

Todd shrugs awkwardly, looking back at the road. “Yeah, well.”

“That’s… new. That people do things like that when I’m involved.”

“Yeah, well, that’s bullshit too,” Todd mutters. “Mary’s getting blood on your pants, by the way.”

“Oh. So she is. Not a lot, though.” Dirk yawns. “This has been a very long and strange day. Is it all right if I sleep?”

“Sure. Not like there’s a lot else to do for four hours.”

Dirk nods, in the corner of his vision. He puts Mary in the backseat with the bat and curls into the side of the car. Soon his breathing sounds even, and Todd is left to drive in the quiet.

 

“Why’re we in the mountains?” is the next thing Dirk mumbles. He blinks owlishly at the road lit only by headlights winding in front of him, rubbing at his eyes a little. “When did that happen?”

“When you were asleep. We’re nearly there.”

He looks at Todd with a frown. “Aren’t you tired?”

Todd is _exhausted._ “I’m fine.”

“You look… not quite that.”

“I’m fine.”

Dirk purses his lips and looks like he’s about to disagree again, but stops when he sees the safehouse. “That is _massive._ ”

“It had to house all of us.” The cars are all in the drive. “Good, everyone made it here.”

They get out of the car, Todd taking Mary and Dirk taking Amanda’s bat. They walk in the door to see Amanda and Farah right there, waiting. Dirk leans the bat against the wall by the door and Amanda instantly collides with him in a hug. It’s the first time she’s done so in months, and he treasures it for the brief span that it lasts.

“Where the hell were you guys?” Farah asks when she takes her turn to hug Dirk. “You were later than we thought.”

“We ran into Friedkin.”

“Friedkin?” Riggins is in the doorway to the kitchen. As always, Todd stiffens at his presence. “He was there?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

Todd’s jaw clenches. “He was an asshole,” he says shortly. “He’s scared that he’s going to go back to his boss and she’s going to be furious because of what happened. I broke his nose. He didn’t follow us.”

“Anything else?”

Todd’s not going to talk about this with him. “That’s the gist.”

“How did you break his nose? Didn’t he have a gun?”

“Todd took the moment to be rather more reckless than I might have usually liked.” Dirk stands next to Todd. He looks tense, his fists clenched. “Hello, Colonel.”

Riggins’s face turns abruptly stoic. “Dirk.”

“Todd’s indicated that it was your assistance that got them into the base for us. Invaluable.”

Riggins looks at Todd, startled. “Really?”

“Invaluable wasn’t the word I used.” He doesn’t want any of this going to his head.

“I didn’t think it was.” Riggins returns his attention to Dirk. “You’ve got very good friends, Dirk. He threatened to feed me to his cat.”

It’s Dirk’s turn to look startled. “Did you?”

“Yes.” He leaves the _and I still might do it_ hanging in the air.

“Well. Thank you for coming to them.”

“I’m leaving tonight to try and get things settled for everyone. Make sure you can all return to your lives. Can I talk to you for a minute before I do?”

“I…” Dirk hesitates. Todd straightens a little, not having been kidding about letting Mary eat Riggins. “No, thank you. Todd’s been driving all day, you see, and he keeps _telling_ me he’s not tired, but I know that he is. So I think I’d like to walk him to his room. Ensure that he gets there without falling asleep on the way.”

“Smart plan,” Todd agrees.

Riggins frowns. “Amanda and Farah can’t do that?”

“No.” Farah shakes her head. “No, we can’t, we’ve got to…” she trails off, clearly floundering a little.

“Go have sex,” Amanda says quickly. Farah points at her.

“Yes! We’ve got to do that! It’s very urgent, suddenly. You know how it is. So we’re going to go… do that. Come on.” Farah grabs Amanda’s hand. She mouths ‘sorry’ at Todd as she goes. Todd both shrugs and pulls a face.

“After that, do-“

“I don’t want to hear your apologies.” Dirk’s voice is quiet and tired, but steely at the same time. “I’ve thanked you for what you’ve done. I think at this point, this means we don’t need to talk to each other any longer, thank you.”

Pain flashes across Riggins’s face before it reverts to impassivity. “Of course.” He nods sharply, grabs a backpack from the couch, and disappears, closing the door behind him. Dirk watches him go.

“You know you don’t owe that asshole a thing, right?” Todd asks.

“I do.” He smiles wearily at Todd. “Thank you for saying it, though. I don’t actually know where your room is.”

“Stairs.”

The two of them trudge up them, Todd letting Mary go at the foot before they do. She’s had a busy day, too.

“Yours is next to mine.” Todd points. “You’ve got a bathroom with a shower and shit. There’s some clothes in there if you want to change.”

Dirk gives him a soft smile and Todd must really be tired, because it makes his stomach jump slightly. “Thank you, Todd. All of you. For everything.”

He gives him a sleepy smile back. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Well, I just did. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“That’s… not totally unlikely.” He yawns.

“Go to bed.” 

“Okay. Maybe don’t go knocking on Amanda and Farah’s door to thank them either, it might have started out as a cover story but Amanda’s a method actor.” 

Dirk looks amused. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Cool.” Todd stumbles into his room. He tugs his shirt off (Mary had gotten some blood on it) and tugs sweatpants on. He checks his phone just in case (everyone he cares about is here, but it still feels important somehow). He crawls into bed. Right when he’s dozing off, his arm tingles. He tugs it out from under him and looks at it.

_You were right. Everything turned out okay._

Todd smiles drowsily. He’s not sure what his Match has been up to, but he’s tired and content enough that he tugs out a ballpoint and scrawls on his arm before turning back over and falling asleep.

_Yeah. It did._

 

Todd wakes up early as he always tends to do these days, and thinks about trying to go back to sleep. Then he remembers that he’s awake in a world where Dirk is finally no longer in Blackwing, and also one where Riggins might decide to show up so he can try and corner him again, so he rolls out of bed.

Todd stumbles down the stairs, resting a hand on the wall as he goes.

“How did you survive waking up in the mornings for work every weekday?” Ken asks from where he’s sitting on one of the living room couches next to Bart. Bart’s holding his hand and not looking fully conscious herself but happy.

“I can do it if I have to,” he mumbles. Something furry brushes against his ankles and he looks down to see Mary rubbing up against him. He bends over and picks her up, petting her. He’d forgotten to put a shirt on before he staggered in (sleep still clouding over his brain), so he can feel how nice and warm and fuzzy she is. Good. He shifts her to one arm, rubs his eyes with a hand, and then puts her on his shoulder where she likes to perch sometimes, smiling a little. He feels someone’s eyes on him, so he looks up, blinking vaguely. Dirk’s watching him with wide eyes.

“What?” he yawns.

Dirk goes pink. “Nothing,” he says quickly. “I tried to feed your cat but I didn’t know where you put the food, so she’s probably hungry.”

“She’ll be okay if she waits a little.”

“She’s a shark. Who is sometimes a cat, but also a shark.”

“Yeah, a shark who is sometimes a cat but also a shark who’s not going to die if she eats a little later than normal.” Todd reaches into the cupboard where he’s been storing the cat food. “Also she’s not my cat.”

Dirk frowns, pulling open drawers until he finds a spoon and hands it to Todd. “Whose cat is she?”

Todd starts spooning the food into the bowl. “She’s your cat.”

“What? No, she’s not.”

“Yes, she is. I took her from your apartment, I just wanted to take care of her for you before you got back.”

Dirk looks at Todd. Then the cat peering at the food from his shoulder. Then at Todd, eyebrows raised significantly. “Todd. That’s your cat.” Dirk scratches the top of her head. “ _Definitely_ your cat. Can you actually bend over to put the food down with her on your shoulder or do you generally just hover there awkwardly?”

“He generally just hovers there awkwardly,” Ken confirms. “Sometimes he sings to her. Usually Florence + the Machine songs, but sometimes this one Beatles tune when he thinks she’s stressed.”

Dirk turns surprised but pleased eyes on Todd. “Really?”

Todd feels himself flush. “Can you put her dish on the ground for me, please?”

Dirk drops the dish on the ground and sits next to it. Mary launches herself off of Todd’s shoulders so she can eat. Todd sits on the floor by Mary, but she’s small enough that he’s essentially sitting next to Dirk.

“Thank you for the clothes, by the way.” Dirk readjusts his Robert Plant shirt. “I suppose I’ll have to actually acquire a wardrobe from scratch like last time.”

“Not from scratch, you’ve got the jackets and the ties.”

“What?”

“I, um.” Todd’s suddenly nervous for no good goddamn reason _because emotions are confusing and terrible_. “There were two jackets and a bunch of ties and I didn’t know what you’d want to keep, so I just… grabbed all the ones I could see.”

“Really?”

“Yeeeees?”

Dirk beams. “Thank you.”

Todd quickly looks at the wall because it’s too early in the morning for smiles like that. “You’re welcome.”

He hums a little. “No coffee?”

“Coffee requires movement.” Todd closes his eyes. “I already moved a little and then I ended up back down. I need a minute.” 

The comfortable silence that follows sitting next to Dirk has nothing to do with that choice. Nothing at all.

 

Bart and Ken are out in the woods somewhere because Bart wanted to climb trees and Ken wanted to show her how. The Rowdy Three are all hanging out in the van together. Todd’s not sure what Amanda and Farah are doing, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to go find out.

He finishes cooking the burgers, putting them on the paper plates they’d hastily shoved on the counters when they’d done a grocery run one last time before the breakout. He walks into the woods until he reaches Dirk where he’s sitting in a small patch of treeless space, legs crossed and eyes closed.

“Here,” Todd says when he opens his eyes, handing him the plate. Todd’s not sure how much Dirk ate at Blackwing, but he knows he looks skinnier enough that he’s a little concerned.

“Oh. Thank you.” Dirk bites into the burger as Todd sits next to him. “How did you find me?”

Todd gestures at the jacket he’s got draped over his shoulders. “I looked for the splotch of purple and went that way.”

“Ah. Makes sense.” They eat quietly for a little bit before Dirk speaks again. “So, when did the pararibulitis start being a thing?”

“You put that together too, huh?”

He shrugs. “Wasn’t hard.”

Fair enough. “Started being a thing when you disappeared.”

“When I disappeared?”

Todd’s turn to shrug now. “I went to the bathroom. Amanda called me to tell me about the Rowdy Three being taken. I had an attack. When it was over, you were gone.”

“Are you okay?”

“Won’t kill me.”

“That’s good.” Dirk puts his burger down and looks into the trees. “I wanted to apologize,” he finally says. Todd looks up at him quizzically. “For everything.”

“I, uh, I don’t know what everything is.”

“ _Everything._ ” Dirk gesticulates widely. “ _This._ All of it.”

Todd’s still not following. “The. The trees?”

“ _No._ ” Dirk runs a hand through his hair. “The…” he purses his lips. “You made it quite clear that you didn’t want anything to do with me, and I kept dragging you into it anyway, and now you’re on the run from the government, and you’ve seen a _lot_ of people die, in pretty awful ways, and even if you _hadn’t_ , I still should have listened to you when you told me to go away, so I’m sorry.”

Todd’s still not good at this, never been good at this, maybe won’t _ever_ be good at this, but for Dirk, he realizes, he’s willing to give it a shot. “I’m. Listen. I mean.” Fuck, he can’t even get a sentence out. “Thank you for apologizing. But I think… before I went to get you at the hospital, I talked to Amanda, and she told me I was a better person because I knew you. And she’s right, you know? Cause before I was just some dick lying to his sister, and now I’m, well, I’m still kind of a dick, but I’m at least not lying to her anymore. I’m actually trying, instead of telling myself I’m trying without doing any real work, and that’s something. And I’m… I was miserable. And now I’m not. You’re my best friend, and I like being around you. So thanks for saying you’re sorry, but I’m glad you did it, and I don’t regret being here.”

Ugh. Too much talking. He sounded like an idiot. He puts his plate down and pulls his knees up, resting his arms on top of them. He glances out of the corner of his eye to see Dirk smiling at the ground.

“I’m sorry, too,” he blurts, still not looking properly at Dirk.

“What? What for?”

“The, when I called you-“ he takes a deep breath. “When I called you a monster. That was… I was upset, and I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I shouldn’t have done it. And I’m sorry.”

“To be fair, I’d rather dramatically lied to you.”

“Yeah, I know, but that doesn’t make what I said okay. You’re not a monster. Not the way Friedkin meant it and not the way I meant it. Wrong on all counts. You’re not a monster. You’re just… you. And I’m sorry that I said it.”

“I accept your apology,” Dirk tells him after a beat. Todd nods, and they’re both silent for a little bit.

“I will admit that I somewhat impressively mishandled many things,” Dirk says eventually. “But I’m fairly certain still that climbing through your window was a reasonable call to make.”

Todd grins up at the sky. “You’re not getting away with that shit again, I can tell you that right now.”

“I didn’t get away with it the first time, if you recall, you threw a shoe at me. Poorly, admittedly, but you did.”

“My shoe throwing abilities are _fine._ ”

“Not fine enough to do me any serious injury, which’ll prove an advantage to doing it in the future, I’m sure.”

“I’m serious, you climb through my window, I’m investing in a Nerf gun.”

“Seems rude.”

“So does breaking into my apartment.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have made it so break-into-able.”

Todd laughs and finally looks to see Dirk grinning at him. “May the best Nerf gun win, dude.”

“I don’t believe for a second you’ll do it, and even if you did, the best dapper young gentleman with agile climbing abilities would do best.”

“Yeah.” Todd feels better than he has in a long time. “You keep telling yourself that.”

 

Dirk has a tendency to doodle question marks. He’ll trace their outline on his leg with his finger, scribble them onto pieces of paper, and eventually Todd asks why. Dirk’s shoulders twitch.

“Question marks,” he says slowly, like he’s thinking carefully about how he wants to articulate it as he says it. “Are important, I think. Because if you ask a question, that means there has to be an answer. That means things… keep going. Means _you_ keep going, that there’s still a future, that you keep persevering. And I’ve never really had anyone to share a question mark with, that’ll keep forging on with me, but I’ve had it for myself since I got out of Blackwing the first time. And then I sort of… lost hope I’d ever have a question mark again while I was in there last time. And now I’m out. And I have them again, and I just… want to keep reminding myself, I suppose.”

Todd nods thoughtfully, then hands him a marker. Dirk smiles gratefully, and absently traces one onto a piece of notebook paper while they watch TV.

 

The days at the safehouse are quiet. Dirk learns how to make coffee and every morning when Todd staggers into the kitchen, he is met with a mug that he gives a pleased grunt at the sight of, slowly drinking it while Dirk feeds Mary and the two of them lean on the counter together, Dirk working his way through a book on his phone and Todd just absorbing being awake. It’s a nice ritual. 

Sometimes Dirk, Amanda, and Bart run around the woods together. Sometimes he and Todd watch TV, or banter with each other. Dirk, Todd’s found, is just as snarky as he is, only he’s quieter about it, and pulls the “hello, I am a charming clueless foreigner” thing as a cover, and that just can’t stand (not that he’s charming, because he’s _not_ , he’s a closet asshole that likes to believe he’s charming, that’s it). Sometimes he wanders off into the woods quietly on his own while Todd reads the news.

It’s all nice.

 

“You know, Amanda and Farah are sickeningly adorable,” Ken comments as Todd refills Mary’s water dish and grabs a string cheese. “But man, at least they have their shit figured out. They’re so much easier than you two.”

“Us two who?”

Ken raises his eyebrows. Todd frowns at him until it clicks and he points at him, cheeks flaming.

“ _No._ No. I don’t know whatever it is that you’re implying, but if it is what I think it is, the answer is _no_ , because it just _is._ Dirk is my friend, and I have very, very _friendly_ type feelings about him, and that is all.”

“Yeah,” Ken says. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“No, you are, you are _deliberately misconstruing_ my statements, I don’t have any feelings, actually, at all, ever, because they are _terrible_ , so I don’t get them as a matter of _principle._ ”

“Todd looks indignant.” Dirk swans into the kitchen. “Why?”

“I accused him of having emotions and he’s taking umbrage,” Ken asserts serenely as Todd shoots him death glares.

“Of course he does.” He grabs an apple. “He just pretends he doesn’t because he doesn’t like having them and thinks it makes him more punk.”

Todd turns his glare on Dirk. “I don’t like you.”

“Impossible. Everybody likes me. I’m very charismatic.”

“You’re not charismatic, you’re just an _asshole._ ”

“I can be two things.” He takes a bite from the apple. “Astounding, I know, for someone who pretends not to have emotions, but I’m sure you can wrap your head around it.” He grins at Todd before swanning back out with the apple. Todd pushes down the returning smile he wants to give. He sees Ken watching him knowingly, and points at him again.

“ _Friend feelings._ ”

“Uh huh.”

“I don’t like you, either.”

“Please dislike me in a different way than you dislike Dirk, I don’t want to have to deal with that.” He promptly dodges the string cheese that comes sailing at him.

 

“So let me get this straight,” Dirk says again.

“Yep,” Todd repeats. The windows are all rolled down in the car, but they’re not going fast enough on their trip back from the grocery store that’s about half an hour away that the wind going by is making too much noise to hear.

“People are frequently discouraged from driving drunk, for all the obvious reasons.”

“Yes.”

“And yet.”

“Mm-hm.”

“No one has raised any concerns about the existence of drive through liquor stores.”

“I mean, not _no one_ , but they’re around.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“ _Really?_ ”

“Yup.”

“That’s terrible. That’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever heard.”

Todd glances at him, eyebrows raised. “Really? _That’s_ the most terrible thing you’ve ever heard?”

“Unequivocally.”

They start turning up the drive towards the house. “The CIA shit, your cases, and drive through liquor stores are the worst options you can think of?”

“At least I did those things _sober._ ”

“Yeah? All of them?”

Dirk sniffs. “Shut up, Todd.”

Todd grins as they pull the grocery bags out of the car. “Do I ever get to hear stories about cases you worked on drunk?”

“No, because there are none, because I am a consummate professional.”

When they walk into the house, all the others are gathered there chattering. Amanda looks up at them.

“Sup,” she says. “We can go home.”

Dirk and Todd stare at her.

“What?” Dirk finally manages. 

“Riggins came.”

Todd tenses, sees Dirk do the same next to him. “Yeah? He still here?”

“No. He wanted to stick around so he could, y’know-“ she nods at Dirk. “Try and shoot the shit with him again, but we told him to go fuck himself. Anyway, he says everything’s tied up with the CIA. A nonissue. We won’t be brought in if we go back to the rest of the world. The boys said that he was telling the truth, too. We can go home.”

Todd’s floored. They’ve been here for close to a month, and he’d known logically that they’d probably get to leave eventually, but hearing it is something else.

“Ah.” There’s a very odd note to Dirk’s voice. “That’s. Yes. Very good news. I’ll have to start packing shortly. Excuse me.”

He sidles out of the house. Everyone looks at Todd. Todd looks at everyone. Todd nods.

“I’ll be back.”

Dirk’s leaning against the back of the house when Todd finds him, his hands in his jeans pockets. His hair’s curling a little more than normal over his face, it having been a while since he got it cut. Todd leans next to him, arms folded over his chest. Both are quiet for a moment.

“I’ve gotten so used to it here,” Dirk says suddenly. “The way things worked. And it’s good that we’re not going to be hunted down, it is, but I just… started to like it. How things were.”

Todd’s not sure what to say, so instead he just waits.

“I’d start up the agency properly, when we got back.”

“Is that what it’d make you happy?”

“Yes. It would.”

“Then good.”

“Will you still come be a part of it, after all of this? Or has all this been enough?”

Todd sees what the problem was now. “Yeah, I will,” he answers immediately. “I’d like that a lot.”

Dirk looks up, startled. Then he smiles, an expression somehow small and vast, and looks at the ground. Todd smiles too. The two of them stand there for a little while, feeling the light breeze blow past.

 

“Clearly,” Dirk says as they stand in Todd’s apartment in the Ridgely. “The universe wants us to have these apartments.”

“Or,” Todd counters, folding the last of his shirts. “Our apartments stayed vacant because this is a shitty building, and the new landlord might be less homicidal, but she still doesn’t give a shit enough for her to ask where we’ve been for months, and we still don’t have enough money to go anywhere nicer, so here we stay.”

“Yes,” Dirk agrees seriously. “The will of the universe.”

 

Three weeks later, there’s a clattering by the window he’s left open, and he glances up to see Dirk in his brand new yellow leather jacket and the tie patterned with tiny unicycles climbing through it. Not only is he unsurprised, but he’s been waiting for it. He grabs his Nerf gun, also brand new, and fires five times, a dart landing expertly on Dirk’s face for each round. He yelps but clings to the window and doesn’t fall. They stare at each other for a minute, Dirk halfway through Todd’s window with darts clinging to his face, Todd holding the gun loosely at his side.

“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Dirk finally says.

“Yes. You mentioned that.”

“Seems a bit overkill.”

“If anything, it feels like underkill.”

“I’ll get you back for this.”

“For defending my home against a multicolored criminal lunatic?”

“Underkill isn’t a word.”

Todd shoots him in the face again.

 

“I don’t remember the nights being quite so late for the Patrick Spring case,” Todd says on the third night in a row that they’re at the offices past midnight. It’s not a particularly large space, one main room to meet clients in and a side room that Dirk insists could be useful for “secret conferences”, but it’s theirs, and Todd likes it a lot.

“Yes.” Dirk’s nearly vibrating next to him. “This one seems like it involves a lot of staying up, doesn’t it?”

Todd blinks at the travel mug in his hand, a bright yellow stripe around it that differentiates it from Todd’s navy blue one. “How much caffeine have you had at this point?”

“Ummmm…” Dirk looks thoughtfully at the mug. “Lots?”

“Can you even see straight right now?”

“Yes. Even if you’re a bit-“ Dirk pats the side of Todd’s face. Todd pretends not to notice the way his face heats up at the contact. “Wiggly round the edges. I can read, though.”

“Better than me right now,” Todd mutters. The words keep blurring in and out on the file he’s reading.

“Do you want some of my coffee?”

“I tried your coffee before. I’m pretty sure it’s made of only sugar and caffeine.”

“Yes, so it should wake you right up.”

Todd shakes his head. “I’ll be fine,” he mumbles, and that’s the last thing he really remembers before he wakes up leaning against Dirk. His face is mashed against Dirk’s shoulder, and before he really registers that he should probably move, he realizes that Dirk’s arm is around him, and he’s quietly reading him the file he’s working on in a low hum, even though he must know Todd’s not awake. 

Todd feigns unconsciousness for a couple more minutes, until he’s not feigning anymore.

 

As Dirk and Todd travel through the abandoned hospital, Todd thinks that perhaps it should have been obvious, that there would be more holistic sort of people who weren’t in Blackwing. It had genuinely surprised him nonetheless. This man they’re chasing, Emmett Rossi, has suddenly been able to take soundbites out of people’s minds and play them out loud. Dirk doesn’t think it will last long, knowing it through however he knows things but unable to come up with one solid theory as to why. Todd, Dirk, Farah, and Amanda have all divided into teams of two, Dirk and Todd, Amanda and Farah, and are moving through the creepy building separately to try and find him quicker. Farah and Amanda don’t always accompany them on cases, but both popped in for this one, Farah having worries about just the two of them going up against someone else with abilities. Everyone’s under strict orders not to believe their ears from the other team shouting, only to check their phones.

“He picked the creepiest fucking building to hide in, huh?” Todd asks, shining the flashlight on his phone around.

“Yes,” Dirk mutters. He’s brought an actual flashlight, peering around corners with it. “I didn’t think it could get much worse than the building at the zoo with all the dead bodies, but as it turns out, it can.”

Todd side-eyes him. He’s been tense during this whole case. Todd’s pretty sure having one that actually contains someone who can do something similar to what he can do rather than just something profoundly weird is raising all kinds of Blackwing feelings. “We’ll get him soon, okay?” he says, berating himself for not being able to phrase it better.

Dirk flashes him a tight smile. “Yep.”

“ _Don’t!_ ”

Todd whips around at Amanda’s scream coming from the opposite direction. 

“Todd?” 

“ _Don’t, it’ll burn you too, don’t!_ ”

‘Todd, what-“

“It’s Amanda’s first pararibulitis attack.” He clenches his jaw. “Come on. We must be getting close.”

“I don’t _ever_ want to hear from you again,” Jodi snaps as they jog down the hall. “And neither does Jamie, and neither does Ricky. I won’t tell Jamie, because I’m not a _you_ level of asshole, I guess, but-“

Todd hears a sound coming from the right. He grabs Dirk’s arm and drags him, trying to hear Rossi through the loudness of all the other voices.

“ _Monster_ ,” an unknown voice snarls. Dirk flinches, but keeps going. “ _Freak_ , _monster_ -“

“Almost there,” Todd mutters. “Almost there, come on-“

Todd hears a clattering inside one of the doors right in front of them and goes to open it when the voice changes. It starts echoing through the halls. Todd can’t quite catch what it is at first, but then he hears it properly. It’s a woman’s voice, quietly singing.

“ _When I find myself in times of trouble-_ “

Dirk freezes and Todd turns around. He’s staring straight ahead in horror, mouth open slightly.

“Dirk?”

“ _Speaking words of_ _wisdom-_ “ the voice laughs softly. “See, it’s okay, sweetheart, you just skinned your knee a little-“ She has an accent Todd doesn’t quite recognize. Dirk’s eyes are wide, hands shaking, and Todd knows who it must be, heart suddenly pounding in his ears.

He turns back to the door, flinging it open. Rossi looks startled to see them as Todd storms towards him.

“Wait-“ Dirk croaks as Todd’s fist sails through the air. He coldcocks Rossi. He drops, and the voice abruptly vanishes. He looks to see Dirk reaching out a little, frozen.

Todd knows better than to ask if he’s all right. “Give me a second.”

Dirk nods slowly, withdrawing his arm and seeming to almost shrink in on himself. Todd pulls his phone out and quickly calls Amanda.

“Did you get him?”

“Yeah. Second floor. Did you hear anything?”

“We’re first floor, we heard some stuff muffled from where you guys were. What was all that?”

“Some stuff from college and your first pararibulitis attack.”

“Oh.” She sounds startled. “Um. Really?”

He shuffles a little. “Yeah.”

“Is Dirk okay?”

“I-“ He glances back. Dirk’s expression hasn’t changed, still frozen in shock and pain. “There was some stuff. Can you take Rossi in to the cops for us? I was hoping the two of us could go back to my apartment.”

Amanda’s quiet for a second. “So pretty extremely unokay, huh?”

“I. Yeah.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.”

“Thanks.” He hangs up and walks back to Dirk. “Hey.”

Dirk nods.

“You wanna go home?”

Dirk’s face twitches. He nods again.

“Okay. Come on. Let’s go home.”

 

They don’t talk on the bus ride home. They sit next to each other, Todd quietly keeping his leg pressed against Dirk’s, hoping it brings him some form of comfort, Dirk’s face now vacant. They silently walk up the stairs to Todd’s apartment. Once they’re inside, Dirk sits on Todd’s couch while Todd checks his phone at a text chirp. One from Amanda.

_We got him to the cops. They’re a lot nicer to us than they are to you._

Todd can’t find it in him to smile. _Thanks._

_Welcome._

He looks over at Dirk, who’s pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of somewhere and is methodically, mechanically drawing a question mark on it, the pencil gripped tight in his hand. Todd’s not sure when to interrupt him, _if_ he should interrupt. He’s still trying to figure out what to do when the pencil snaps with a loud, sudden _crack_. Both of them jump, Dirk staring at the slivers of wood in his hand in surprise.

“Get up,” Todd instructs gently when it becomes clear Dirk isn’t going to do anything other than stare. He stands and waits in the middle of the room while Todd pulls the first aid kit out from one of the kitchen cabinets. He barely flinches when Todd carefully pulls the splinters out. They’re not that deep, nothing too bad, but they’re bleeding a little. Todd puts bandaids around his fingers and hesitates, not letting go of his hands just yet.

“Look,” he says quietly. “I don’t… you don’t have to talk to me about this, about any of it, you can talk to anyone, hell, you could just talk at Mary, but please tell me that you won’t just… stew in this. That you’re not going to get so far down in your head that you can’t crawl back out again.”

Dirk turns the wide eyes from the bandages on his fingers to Todd’s face. Then he leans forwards a little and wraps his arms around Todd. Todd automatically does the same, startled. They haven’t hugged since the breakout, and hadn’t before then. Dirk’s arms are tight. Hesitantly, Todd runs his hand up and down his back.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Not your fault,” Dirk mumbles.

It takes a little while longer for them to talk again. Dirk pulls back, but stays close. His mouth keeps opening and closing. Todd doesn’t push him.

“I couldn’t remember her voice anymore.” When he finally speaks, his voice is low and uncertain. “I could sort of… I remember that she spoke, and I remember that she sang. But I didn’t know what it sounded like anymore. She died when I was a kid, you know. Well, you do know. I imagine it was in my file. And I told myself that, well, you can’t miss what you don’t remember. That if I didn’t remember what she sounded like, I couldn't miss her voice. I couldn’t miss _her._ I didn’t even know that I had her voice in my brain anymore. But I did. And now I know what it was. And I almost wish I didn’t, because… I only had her facts and figures, I don’t really…” he purses his lips. “Her name was Stela Cjelli, and she liked music, and very soon I will be older than she ever was. And that’s what I knew. And now I know this, too. I _remember_ this. And everything that was scabbed over just… isn’t anymore. It’s there, and it’s raw, and it hurts.”

Todd swallows. “I wish I could make it stop hurting for you.” It’s a little more honest and vulnerable than he tends to get. It doesn’t really feel like it matters.

Dirk shakes his head a little. “I don’t think there’s anything that can.”

Todd wants, suddenly, to run his fingers through his hair, put his hands on either side of Dirk’s face, kiss him until he doesn’t have that slightly broken, slightly lost expression on his face. It’s an urge that he thinks has been lurking under the surface of his brain for a while, and has picked a really, _really_ bad time to properly appear. He tries to shove it to the back of his head, instead putting his hands on Dirk’s shoulders.

“It’s okay to miss her,” he says, wishing more than anything, even more than how much he wants to press his lips against Dirk’s, that he was better at this. “It’s okay to let it hurt. I’d fix it if I could, but it’s okay that it’s happening. It’s okay to miss her and think about her.”

“It…” Dirk wets his lips. “It was just the two of us, you know? Just me and her, and then she was gone. She was the only person who ever loved me. Who didn’t think I was a monster.” His eyes finally flick to Todd’s, almost anguished. “ _Am_ I a monster? For wishing I didn’t know what she sounded like, for wishing I didn’t have this? Does that make me awful? They started telling me that not that long after I arrived, it’d make sense if-“

Todd feels that rush of anger that comes with hearing about Blackwing and that slam of guilt whenever he remembers what he called Dirk. He sees that sentence from his file flash in front of him again, _subject’s abilities seem to have grown since his entry into the program at age ten._ “ _Nothing_ that they ever told you was true. You’re not a monster for this, for _anything_ , you’re a human being, and you’re allowed to feel however you goddamn well please, and I am so _fucking_ sorry I ever called you that, and I’m so _fucking_ sorry that Riggins or whoever the fuck said that to you, because it is _bullshit._ ”

“Riggins never did. Just… the others.”

“Yeah, well, fuck the others, and fuck Riggins for everything else anyway.”

Dirk’s lips twitch. “What did he say to you to make you hate him so much?”

“I told you, I don’t-“

“Yes, I know what you told me, I was there.” He sounds closer to who he normally is, so he can give Todd as much shit as he wants. “But I’m willing to bet there was something else, too.”

Todd lets his want to distract Dirk and his want to not talk about this duke it out for a few seconds before he lets the former win. “He tried to justify his behavior to me, and when I told him to go fuck himself, he said that as someone who’d also fucked up in their life, I should have a little more understanding.”

Dirk looks, for one of the few times Todd’s ever seen him, furious. “He _what?_ ”

“How is _that_ the thing you’re pissed at him for-“

“I am pissed at him for _many_ things, and I’m adding this to the list, and you’re the one who just told me I could feel however I wanted, so don’t even try.”

Damn it. “I know who I am, and what I’ve done, and I know that I’m better than him.”

“Good.” Dirk coughs a little. “Thank you. For talking about this. With me.”

“Any time you need me to, I can. I’d understand if you want to go to Amanda or Farah or something, cause they’re _way_ better at this than I am, but if you need someone to talk about this shit with, I can.”

“I like talking with you.” He smiles faintly. “It means a lot that you try.”

Todd quickly looks at the ground with a smile. He moves his hands from Dirk’s shoulders. “Do you want to get something to eat?”

“Yes, please.”

Todd somewhat reluctantly moves out of Dirk’s space and starts rummaging through the takeout menu drawer.

“She’d have liked you, you know.”

“Hm?”

“My mother.”

Todd whips his head up, startled. Dirk’s still smiling. “Really?”

“Yes. You have the same taste in music. Good heart.”

Todd flushes. “Thank you.”

“Mm. I don’t really remember very well what she looked like, otherwise I’d tell you. Red hair. I _do_ miss knowing that, I suppose. Who was the woman’s voice?”

Todd blinks at the abrupt subject change. “Oh.”

“I mean. Sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, it’s fine. Uh, that was Jodi. My best friend in college. She was talking about… well, it was after I tried to sell Mexican Funeral’s equipment. She came as I guess an emissary of the others. Ricky and Jamie, those were the others in the band.”

“I see.”

Todd decides to answer the question Dirk’s not asking because he doesn’t know if he can. “She wasn’t going to tell Jamie I was in love with him,” he says, sifting back through the takeout menus. “Which she’d known all along, and I never told him.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. And I was an asshole.”

“You were.” Dirk’s voice is calm. “You’re better now, though.”

Todd pretends to be occupied with the menus, clearing his throat. “Thanks. Wouldn’t have worked out, anyway. Don’t fall in love with straight boys.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Dirk continues before Todd can even really think properly about asking why. “Do you still have the menu for the pizza place down the road?”

 

Dirk ends up falling asleep on his couch after they watch the first few episodes of _The X-Files_ , solely because it was the first thing in Todd’s Netflix queue and Dirk had known he liked it. Todd doesn’t bother waking him up, instead throwing a blanket over him and turning out the light. He lies in bed awake for a while, thinking about Dirk’s offhand comment from earlier, _I do miss knowing that, I suppose_ , and wonders.

 

It takes about a month of work, and it has to be done sneakily. Dirk borrows his laptop sometimes to look up case things because he doesn’t own one, so Todd deletes his history and slides the leads he finds into a bookmark folder inside a bookmark folder. It takes some phone calls and emails and digging, but eventually he finds what he’s looking for.

 

Todd lies on the roof of their office building. It’s been a long time since he wore a tee shirt without even a light long sleeved shirt underneath it, so he’s warm enough lying against the jacket he’s put as a pillow underneath his head. He comes up here once or twice a week, after the rougher days, when an attack’s been particularly bad, to look up at the sky. He doesn’t have the money for subscriptions to anywhere, but the nice thing about the Internet is that most of it’s free. And he still remembers a lot from college. So when he looks at the stars, he knows, to a certain degree, what it is he’s looking at. As much as anybody does, he guesses.

There’s a lot he regrets about. Well. Most of his life. Most of the pre-Dirk parts. Hurting Amanda, hurting Jodi and Ricky and Jamie. The lying, the stealing. Lots of it. But he misses college, in a way. He misses learning. He missed looking at the sky and knowing what he was seeing. The light pollution here isn’t terrible, so he can still see some stars twinkling at him above.

He hears the door open and looks to see Dirk in the rooftop doorway, frozen. He’s left his jacket back in the office, evidently, his sleeves rolled halfway up on his shirt and his tie undone.

“Oh,” he says. “I didn’t know you were up here. I can-“

“It’s fine,” Todd says automatically, realizing afterwards that, even though he wouldn’t normally let even Amanda hang out with him when he wanted to look up at the sky, it’s true.

Dirk lies down next to him, folding his arms across his chest. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet.

“So, um.” Todd takes a deep breath. “I was going to do this tomorrow in an actually planned way but, uh, I started talking now, so I guess I’m gonna do it now.”

“What?”

“I, uh.” Todd reaches into his pocket. He’d gotten it the other day and has been carrying it with him since for fear of losing it in his apartment somehow. “You said you didn’t remember what your mom looked like, and you’d like to, so, I just, um, I found this.”

He pulls the Polaroid out and offers it to Dirk. He takes it with shaking fingers.

“Is that her?” Todd asks, suddenly doubting himself. Dirk nods.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “That’s Mum. How did you even…?”

“I googled her name, and around the years that there could have been photos, and eventually I found someone who’d found this one in a used book they bought with her name on the back, and they’d posted it online in case someone came looking for it, so I asked them to mail it to me.”

“Oh.”

“She looks like you,” Todd says quietly. The woman in the photo is tall and curvy and close to Dirk’s age now, with straight, bright red hair falling just below her shoulderblades. She’s beaming at the photographer, and Todd can see the same toothiness from Dirk’s smile in it, the same brightness in her blue eyes.

Dirk’s choked laugh sounds almost like a sob. “She said she thought my hair would get like hers, when I got older. She said hers was just the same as mine when she was my age.” He swallows. “I don’t know what to say.” His hand finds Todd’s and squeezes it. “Thank you.”

His hand is warm and making Todd’s feel a little tingly. He squeezes back. “You’re welcome.”

“I don’t think you do, you know.”

“Do what?”

“You told me that you knew who you were and what you’d done. Maybe you know the last one, but I don’t think you know the first bit. I think you’re a lot better than you think yourself to be, and I hope you realize that someday.”

Todd’s heart is pounding. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Dirk lays the photo on his chest. They lie there for a little bit.

“This is a surprisingly good view of the stars, all things considered,” Dirk says eventually. “You think they’d be too much light. I’m not complaining, I like coming up here to look, it’s just surprising.”

“The view was pretty good at school. Better here than from the Ridgely.”

“Did you look at the stars often at school?”

“It’s what I was there for.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hm. Astronomy.”

“That’s the one that isn’t astrology, yes? I get confused sometimes.”

Todd knows damn well Dirk knows what he means and is pulling the “attractive clueless guy” thing again. “Please don’t say that to an Astronomy major.”

“Right, yes, of course. What if I think it would be _really_ funny, though?”

Todd grins up at the sky. “Oh, well, if it’s _really_ funny.”

“What planets are there that we can see right now?”

“Uh, well. There’s-“ he unfortunately has to pull his hand from Dirk’s to point, it only occurs to him to use the other hand once he’s done it, and it’s not like he can put it back without things probably getting awkward. “Jupiter, up there.”

“That’s the big one, yes?”

“I saw the Cosmos book in your apartment before we went to get you, I _know_ that you know which one Jupiter is.”

“Humor me.”

“Yes. That is the big one.”

Dirk’s resting his hands on his chest, over the photo and his heart. “What else?”

“Well, Saturn’s over there.”

They lie there for a while, Todd pointing out constellations and answering questions, feeling properly content like he seems to only ever be around Dirk these days.

 

“Dirk says we should check Miss Eveline’s shoes tomorrow and that there might be something in there,” Todd tells Amanda over the phone while Dirk finishes microwaving burritos for dinner.

“Sounds good.” She and Farah have just wrapped eating dinner, apparently. “Say hi for me.”

“Yeah, I will, we’re gonna eat burritos and watch _X-Files_.”

“Oh cool, so you’re gonna watch the show that features a tall, handsome guy with darker hair and wears suits a lot and has a connection to the government and solves mysteries of a weird nature that you had a _huge_ crush on with just some _other_ guy that doesn’t happen to be your type _at all_?”

Todd opens his mouth. Closes it. Glares even though she’s not there. “Shut up.”

He can practically hear her smirk through the phone. “Have fun,” she says, and hangs up.

“What’s got that look on your face?” Dirk asks, handing Todd his plate and sitting next to him.

“My sister,” he glowers. “Is under the impression that she’s funny.”

“Well, whatever she was saying, she was probably right, and also your sister is _hilarious_ , you just have no sense of humor.”

“I have a _fine_ sense-“

“Come on, start the episode, although you better warn me if there’s scary murder twins in this one again, because I will not be responsible for my actions if there are.”

 

Todd gets a text while they’re in between cases, which means Todd is lying on the floor listening to his iPod and Dirk is aimlessly spinning in his chair. They’re… not the most professional in between cases. Todd feels the floor near his hand vibrate and gropes for it, pulling it up in front of his face. It comes from Amanda.

_Mom and Dad are in Seattle. According to Facebook, anyway. They just posted a photo of themselves visiting the Space Needle for the six billionth time. Up to you what you do with that information._

Todd stills. Then his fingers fly across the screen.

_Yeah, that sounds about right. Thanks for letting me know._

Todd sits up slowly, tugging the earbuds out with a sigh.

“Why the sighing?” Dirk asks, still spinning a little.

Todd stands up and heads for their desks that they’ve shoved together, opening his laptop. They’ve both needed to look at the same files or Things That Are Not Evidence Because If It Was Evidence That Would Mean Stealing It From a Crime Scene Or a Police Officer And Stealing Is Wrong often enough that it just made sense to push them in so they could share them, instead of getting up every other minute to see what the other was talking about.

“Amanda texted to say my parents are in Seattle, I just want to check and make sure.” He doesn’t have a Facebook account, having not wanted to stay in touch with pretty much anyone he’d ever known that weren’t his sister and the people he already sees regularly. He knows for a fact his parents haven’t set their account to private, though, so he just searches their names. Sure enough, there’s a selfie of them at the Space Needle. “Yeah, they're here.”

“They wouldn’t have told you so you had the option of seeing them?”

“It wouldn’t have occurred to them.” Todd leans back against the chair, also a spinning one because if you bought one you would get fifty percent off the other. Dirk’s stopped spinning and is watching him carefully, albeit his head swaying back and forth a little while getting used to no longer operating solely in circles.

“Do you not… like your parents?”

“It’s.” Todd folds his arms. “It’s really complicated.”

Dirk leans his head back against the wall so it’ll stop moving, and presents his listening face to Todd. Todd’s gotten pretty good at discerning Dirk’s faces. There’s the “listening” face, the “talking” face, the “I’m listening but I’m about to interrupt” face, the “talking and I’m about to say something that’s going to get me punched” face, just to name a few. Todd sighs.

“I didn’t have… they were not the best parents to grow up with. They weren’t very…” Todd struggles. He remembers doing this with Jodi years and years ago, then mentally winces. He still doesn’t like thinking about any of them. It still hurts. “They had this idea of what Amanda and I would be when they had us. And neither of us were what they’d wanted. So they _love_ us, I think. They’re just not _interested_ in us. And it was… noticeable. It was very noticeable, always.”

Dirk frowns. “How could they be disinterested in you? Even when you’re being a bit of an asshole or pissing me off, you’re fascinating.”

Todd’s pretty sure that’s a compliment. Mostly sure, anyway. “Not to them.”

“What didn’t they think was interesting about you?”

“I… it wasn’t that, maybe, it was… we were too interesting, I guess.” He winces. That’s a poor way to put it, too, and maybe a little haughty, but it was the closest thing he could grab for.

“Ah, I see.”

Todd feels a smile flicker onto his face, even though he knows it’s probably going to disappear pretty quickly. “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” he agrees easily, smiling back. The admission comes more easily than normal, and he wonders suddenly if Dirk has done it to make him smile. “What do you mean?”

“Saying ‘too interesting’ wasn’t right either. It was that the two of us didn’t… fit into what they wanted in kids. The image they had in mind.”

“What didn’t they want in kids, then?”

Dirk’s not going to let this go. Todd takes a deep breath. “We were loud. We never behaved. Our grades weren’t anything better than average, except in what we wanted to go into for professions. We liked loud and angry music. We liked movies and TV and books that they thought were weird. Amanda liked to color all of the pink clothes our parents bought her for her Barbies different colors with crayons and put the dolls in them then, but I think she might have done that just to piss them off. I got into a very good school, which bought me some leeway, but then I didn’t do well and I dropped out, which they’re allowed to be pissed about cause I was the asshole, but even if I hadn’t been, probably would have just reinforced the thing about me being useless. Neither of us are straight, which, _that’s_ definitely in there, although they still don’t know that about me.”

“Really? They don’t know?”

“No. I was too scared to tell anybody when I was a kid. And then I went to college, and I was less scared to tell strangers, but still scared of telling my family.”

“And then?”

Todd feels his jaw twitch. “And then I was lying to them about the pararibulitis, and I thought maybe if they knew I was bi, they’d stop sending me money.”

“Oh.”

Todd sighs, opening up the laptop again. “So I’ve got to ask them if they want to meet up once while they’re here.”

“…because you’re not out to them?”

“Because I was lying about the pararibulitis.”

“I don’t understand. Why does that mean you have to see them?”

“Because…” Todd sighs again. He’s frustrated, not necessarily with Dirk, but more with his inability to phrase the words he wants the right way. “Because what I did to them wasn’t right. And it hurt them. And it wasn’t right and it hurt them in a way… that I don’t feel comfortable in ignoring. So if they’re in my immediate proximity, then I want to see them and play happy families, because that might make it easier for them. And I’m not going to do it the rest of my life, I’m not going to play this role with them forever, I just. I need to do it once. I just need to do it once. And then it makes their lives easier and lightens the weight I’ve got if we pretend like everything’s fine.” He doesn’t know if it makes him a dick if he thinks about it in terms of what makes him feel better. Does doing what is best for his parents cancel it out? He’s not sure.

“They won’t want to talk about it?”

“We talked about it over the phone once while we were trying to get you out. Amanda told them while I was asleep after the Patrick Spring case.”

“And? What did they say?”

“We forgive you if you don’t tell the neighbors or anyone we know, we’re already pretending your sister’s doesn’t exist and are worried about what they’d think.”

Dirk looks taken aback for a moment. Todd reminds himself that as much as it feels sometimes that Dirk has been in his life forever, he hasn’t actually, and that this is the sort of thing that would surprise him. Todd quickly points his finger at Dirk as he opens his mouth.

“ _I fucked them over._ If this is how they handle it, this is how they handle it.”

“They’re not telling anyone about Amanda’s pararibulitis?”

“I mean, everyone knows she’s got it, everyone saw her first attack, but they’re operating on the principle ‘if we ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, then maybe it doesn’t’. If they could get away with anyone not knowing, they would, they didn’t tell anyone when they thought I had it.”

“Why not?”

“I told you.” Todd stares at the Messenger chat box. He’s not sure how to ask them. “Image. Family members with pararibulitis aren’t in it. Dad’s lied about his for years, it makes sense he’d lie about ours, too.”

“What _is_ in that image?”

“Um…” Todd thinks about it. “House in a row where all the other houses look exactly the same, white picket fence, each blade of grass the same length as the last. A husband and wife, 2.5 kids, both heterosexual. The boy is an athlete and sleeps with his girlfriend because that’s what boys do. The girl is smart but not too smart and never sleeps with her boyfriend because nice girls don’t do that. They have nothing physically or mentally that will impede them, unless it’s something that will pass quickly like a cold, or something that happens to everybody, like a broken bone. Everyone always smiles. Both are very popular and both will be Prom King or Queen in their respective years. Both always, always, _always_ agree with their parents. And if they _were_ to happen to disagree with them, then they would always keep it to themselves. They go onto college and do well. Ideally they get very very good jobs, but good can be settled for. They each find someone, fall in love, get married, have kids of their own. That’s the image they want.” The one he can best guess, anyway, the one he’s been able to piece together from all the years he lived with and talked to them.

“That would completely suffocate you.”

“Yeah.” He types a few words, then deletes them. “It would.”

“So what are you going to do, just pretend that’s what you are?”

“No. I’m going to be the nicer, quieter, politer version of me that they assume is the adult I grew into to be. Not the adult they want me to be. Just… somewhere closer to what they like.”

Dirk’s watching him thoughtfully. “I’m going with you.”

Todd’s stomach drops to his feet. “ _What?_ No.”

Surprise flashes onto Dirk’s face, as well as maybe a little bit of hurt. Todd starts vigorously shaking his head, trying to fix it.

“No, no, it’s not that, it’s…” Todd wishes he knew better how to use words. “They’re disappointed in me and what I am, but I’m family, and they love me after a fashion even if they’re bad at it, and that’s a barrier for them, somehow, it keeps them from being… assholes, I guess, it keeps them from being so aggressively passive aggressive. You’re not family. And you don’t fit in their image either, and they’re going to be passive aggressive and probably unpleasant in other ways, and I don’t want to put you through that.”

“I can take care of myself just as much as you can.”

“I’m not saying you can’t, I just. I don’t want to put you through this,” he repeats. “And I can’t handle myself anyway, so then we’re both fucked.”

“You can still handle yourself with your parents.”

“Yeah, because I’ve known them my whole life and know what I’m doing.”

“Look.” Dirk’s got that look Todd’s gotten to know pretty well, the one that says he’s going to run into a dangerous man’s garage to find a missing girl, or that he’s going to try and brave Todd’s fridge to get the Chinese food from two weeks ago that now smells too bad to ignore out. It’s a look Todd’s grown to be very fond of, when it doesn’t involve the possibility of one that gets them hurt. He’s not sure if this counts or not. “You feel bad about what you’ve done, so you’re going to, I don’t know, sit with them and pretend you all don’t dislike each other for an hour or so to try and alleviate it on both sides. And I don’t know if you should do it, because I know you hurt them and screwed them pretty badly, but they hurt and screwed _you_ pretty badly, too. But if you’re going to do it, and I _know_ you are, you’re wearing that expression on your face that means there’s nothing that can move you, then I want to be with you when you do, so you have one person on your side. It’ll be two of them with two of us.”

Todd opens his mouth, then closes it. On the one hand, he doesn’t want them giving Dirk any shit, hates the idea of them looking Dirk up and down in one of his colorful jackets and their lips turning up in cold, cruel disdain. On the other, he likes the idea of someone at his side to help him get through this, especially the person he trusts most in the world.

Per usual, he takes the selfish option.

“You can’t tell them about the holistic stuff,” he tells him. “They’ll be shitty about it to both of us.”

“All right.”

“And you can’t tell them that I have pararibulitis now, because it’ll be a boy who cried wolf kind of thing and they won’t believe me and it’ll get ugly.”

“Sure.”

Todd closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.

“Okay.” He opens his eyes. “I’ll ask them if they want to meet us.”

Dirk smiles. “Sounds like fun. Well, maybe not fun, more like the other thing, but at least we get a meal out of it.”

Todd looks at the wall and grins, and he suspects again that in the case of the latter, that was the intention.

“If my family wasn’t terrible,” he says, still looking at the wall. “And I hadn’t fucked them over so they wouldn’t have wanted to see me, I’d have introduced you to them when I got the chance.”

It’s true, he realizes as the words come out of his mouth. Parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, second aunts twice removed. He would bring Dirk up to them and shake their hand while saying _this is Dirk Gently, and he makes me want to be better._

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He turns his face back to the laptop, while surreptitiously glancing at Dirk out of the corner of his eye. He’s gone a little red but looks very pleased, the sudden hurt from earlier gone, which was more or less the goal when he’d started speaking, even if he’d stumbled on atruth in the process.

_Hey, I saw you guys were in the city! My friend Dirk and I can meet you for lunch, if you want during your visit._

 

Todd tugs on pants after getting out of the shower. He heads for the dresser he’d picked up at a yard sale and opens the drawer. He looks in it for a long moment, before picking a long sleeved plaid shirt. He’s been wearing a lot more band teeshirts over white long sleeved shirts lately, but his parents will like it better if he wears something closer to their view of normal.

His arm tingles before he puts it on and he looks down.

_Today I’m doing something that makes me nervous_.

Todd has started replying to the serious things on his arm. He’s trying to be a better person, and providing comfort or at least commiseration when he can seems to fit in that category. He grabs the pen off his arm for such occasions and writes quickly.

_Me too. Don’t worry. You’ve got this._

He tugs the shirt on. Actually runs a comb through his hair instead of just his fingers. He’s clean shaven, having done so last night. Something about him doesn’t look right. Maybe it’s the way he’s standing. He thinks he might be standing more like he did when he was a teenager, living under their roof. He takes a deep breath.

“You fucked them over,” he whispers to his reflection. “You owe them one.”

Dirk’s key rattles in the lock. He usually does that, as a warning that he’s coming. He doesn’t need to. He’s such a part of Todd’s life that him entering the apartment is so natural he might as well live there. It would be nice, he thinks in that brief second before Dirk opens the door, to live with Dirk. His jackets hanging on the hooks Todd’s attached to his wall in lieu of having a closet to put things in, the corkboard he keeps in his room to help keep track of case info sometimes transferring down to his apartment, Dirk stumbling drowsily out of their bed headed for the kitchen determined to get some form of hot beverage and coming back to the bed with a mug in one hand and a sleepy smile for Todd-

He shoves the thoughts down as Dirk enters. He’s wearing a plain tie this time, no odd little patterns like he tends to like, and his yellow jacket. 

“I thought the jacket might be apt,” he says tentatively. “I met you in one like this and now I’m meeting your parents in it. But if you think it’s too much for them, I can-“

A surge of protectiveness hits him. He imagines it won’t be the first time today. “No,” he interrupts. “Like I said, there’s a few things we can’t talk about, but that’s true of almost every person, and you shouldn’t change who you are for them.”

“You’re pretending you’re somebody else.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

_Because this is my whole life with them. Because I suck and I should do this. Because you’re amazing and I don’t want you changing anything about yourself for terrible people._ “Just is. Come on.”

They head down the stairs so they can get to the bus stop. 

“You said ‘almost every person’,” Dirk observes. “Who’s your not-almost? Amanda?”

“Once upon a time, but that’s not gonna happen anymore.” He’s long since accepted that things will never be what they were with Amanda. Maybe they’ll become close again, someday, but never like they were before he told her about the lying.

“Ah, so you just don’t have a person like that anymore.”

This is very dangerous ground to be on. Todd goes for it anyway, because he’s stupid, evidently. “No, I’ve got you.”

Dirk goes red again. “Oh.”

Todd’s regretting this. “Yeah.”

“Yes, well.” Dirk clears his throat. “That’s. Yes. Good to, good to know. I’m glad to have that information.”

“Happy to help.”

They walk to the bus stop in silence, but Dirk has a tiny smile on his face, so Todd regrets things less. When they’re on the bus, Dirk stretching his legs out and looking up at the ads that lines the walls, he says abruptly to Todd “you’re that person for me, too.”

Todd’s biting his nails. “You don’t have to say that just because I did, you know. It’s fine.”

“I’m not.” Dirk looks at him so Todd puts his hands down and looks back. Dirk’s face is serious. “I have lots of friends now, a lot more than I ever thought I would. But there are… things I don’t feel comfortable telling them. Things I only feel all right telling you. I mean, I talked with you about my mother. That’s something I don’t…” his hand moves possibly subconsciously to his chest, absently rubbing near to his heart, maybe where he keeps that information. “My mother is mine and no one else gets her. No one except you. You’re that person.”

Todd swallows. He nods jerkily, like maybe the abruptness of the gesture will chase away the sudden rise of feelings that make him want to do something really fucking stupid, like kiss Dirk on this piss-smelling bus with weird stains on some of the seats. The impulse is by now nothing close to a new one, but it doesn’t change that some day it’s one harder to push away than others.

Dirk smiles at him. It’s soft and doesn’t help Todd’s weakening resolve not to kiss him. “You really _are_ bad with feelings, aren’t you? I knew it logically but it’s entirely another thing to watch it in action.”

Todd snorts and looks down at his lap with a smile of his own. “No, I’m not great at it.”

“That’s okay.” Todd glances back up at Dirk. He’s still smiling. “I like you anyway. And I don’t approve of this whole venture, by the way, you’re obviously tense and upset-“

“I’m not-“

“Todd, you’ve bitten your fingers down so much they’re pink and bleeding a little.”

Todd raises his hands a little and discovers that yes, Dirk is right. He wipes the blood on his jeans. They’re tiny enough smears that they shouldn’t really be noticeable unless you’re looking for them. Which his parents could be. He doesn’t know for sure, he guesses. “I owe-“

“Yes, so I’ve heard, and perhaps you’re right, but I don’t enjoy it when you’re upset. The point is, I don’t like it, but it’s your decision, and I’ll stand by you either way.”

Todd stares. He breaks into a proper grin. “Thanks.”

Dirk shrugs. “No trouble.”

Todd _really_ wants to kiss him, and he’s thinking about throwing caution to the wind, but then the bus jerks to an abrupt halt, shunting Todd into leaning against Dirk. It feels comfortable, so he stands when the bus settles. “Come on, it’s our stop.”

 

His parents have picked a table outside of the restaurant, under a large umbrella to save them from the shade. They stand when Dirk and Todd approach. His mother hugs him lightly and his father claps him on the shoulder.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”

“And this is?” his mother asks.

And so it starts, the trend of only absently paying attention to the things he and Amanda tell them. “It’s Dirk Gently. I told you he was coming.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” Both his parents shake Dirk’s hand.

“Hello, Mark. Hello, Bethany. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Good things, I hope,” his father says jovially. Dirk laughs along, no doubt in place of admitting that they weren’t very good things at all. They both sit down.

“I hope you don’t mind, dear, we ordered drinks without you.”

Todd’s surprised it occurred to them to not order food without him in the first place. “It’s fine.”

“So, how’s the place with all the suits?” his father asks. Todd’s stomach is starting to get that feeling it often attains around his parents, the one that feels angry, exhausted, and distressed at the same time. It’s a lot and something he hasn’t had to cope with in a long time. He’s out of practice. He tries to do his best.

“I don’t work at Men’s Warehouse anymore, Dad.”

“Really? Since when?”

“About three years and four jobs ago.”

“Did you ever mention this to us?”

“In an email.”

“Hm.”

“Some men from the police called us, sweetie,” his mother says, like it was recently and not about a year and a half ago. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, there was a murder at my old job. They were just looking into it.” It’s not wrong, and Todd’s found that a good component to have if possible when lying is to have the bulk of the lie be not wrong. Just not the whole story.

“A murder?” His mother looks horrified in a perfunctory kind of way. Her tone barely has any inflection of concern. “Goodness, did they catch the person who did it?”

“Yeah. Actually, Dirk did.” Todd grins at him then, a real one, maybe one of the only real ones he’ll have for this lunch. Dirk smiles and shrugs.

“Oh, are you a police officer?” his father asks.

“Private detective, actually.”

“Really? That must be dangerous.”

“It can be, but there’s also a surprising amount of paperwork. Todd’s a lot better at handling that sort of thing than I am, as well as talking to the police, I’ve been told by some officers that I can be… grating.”

Yeah, and that same officer had also called him a freak, and Todd had almost punched him. As it was, he’d verbally ripped him a new one. Fortunately, all the other officers had thought that guy was a dick, and it won him some points with them.

“You’re a detective now, dear?” His mother looks genuinely startled then.

“Yeah. That was in another email.”

“ _Really_?”

“Yeah, Dirk actually has his own agency. I’m his-“

“Partner,” Dirk cuts in before he says “assistant”. Todd looks at him in surprise at the same time as his parents, one of the few times he thinks they’ve all felt the same thing at once. “He’s my partner.”

“You’re a partner in a detective agency?”

“I. Yes, I am.”

“Are you _sure_ that’s what you want to be doing?” His mother’s brow is furrowed, one of the most genuine expressions on her face he’s ever seen. “It doesn’t seem… suited to you, sweetheart. Perhaps you’d be better off trying to get a job a little less… interesting. One that involves something with a, hm. A _lower_ expectation.”

The feeling in his stomach intensifies. He grits his teeth against the well of feelings and intends to tell his mother that he’s happy where he is, which is a neutral enough statement that it won’t provoke anything, but Dirk suddenly speaks.

“Todd’s invaluable to our agency,” he says firmly. “We met on the first case, my last case pre-agency, and not only was he instrumental to solving it, he saved my life many times over. He’s _continued_ to save my life over and over again, including one time where I didn’t think that anyone would do so. He is so much more observational and capable than I am, and when we’re in hot water, he saves me. He is remarkably intelligent, and will see connections from far away that I am too close to see. Without him, there is no agency. As far as I’m concerned, he is _perfectly_ suited to our line of work, and he continues to exceed _expectations._ ”

The feeling is suddenly loosened to be swallowed by something that feels kind of tingly and makes his eyes sting. He swallows and manages to pull a shaking smile up. Dirk’s answering smile isn’t trembling. It’s steady as a rock, and so completely honest that Todd’s having that almost blinding urge to kiss him again.

“Yeah,” Todd manages, sounding pathetically inadequate after Dirk’s speech. “Yeah, it makes me happy. I like it.”

His parents exchange looks.

“Well,” his father says dismissively. “I suppose as long as you’re happy, what job you have doesn’t matter.”

It sounds scornful, but that tingly feeling hasn’t gone away, the one that’s made him flush a little and have the overwhelming wish to grab Dirk’s hand, the sharp and sudden thankfulness that he gets to be in his life, and it’s insulating him against their bullshit.

“So, where did you go to school, Dirk?” his mother asks. Todd knows she wants to use a “sub-par” answer to be passive aggressive and chilly about it. She won’t get it. Dirk doesn’t talk extensively about his past (only little things floating through casually, sometimes stories about his mother now, too), but he knows the answer to this one.

“Cambridge.”

Todd takes a sort of vindictive pleasure about the startled expression on his parent’s faces.

“What did you major in?” The next tack, now from his father. They’re always in sync for things like this.

“Philosophy, with a minor in Classics.”

“What… _unique_ classes.”

That feeling’s starting to sink into Todd again. _You have to be here, you fucked them over, this is important._

“Not for Cambridge, I assure you. We had many people in those.”

His mother opens her mouth, but then it’s time to order their lunch.

They progress with some normalcy from there on (polite attempts at interest in his life, answers as neutral as possible, that sort of thing), making small talk until their food arrives, at which point they’re thankfully too busy eating to talk.

After their plates are cleared, his mother asks “how is your sister?”

“Good. She seems good.”

“She doesn’t require as much money for medication as she used to. Has she found another form of medicine?”

“Holistic.”

Dirk quickly peers over his shoulder as though he had heard a noise to disguise his smile and the rush of breath through his nose that Todd knows was almost a snort. 

“Well. Isn’t that… nice. Do you know if she’s having a good time with her new friend?”

Todd feels a surge of anger. He hears the faint disdain in her voice and knows exactly why. He’ll take anything they dish out when it comes to him, because he deserves it. But Amanda?

He’s got two limits, and she’s one of them.

“You mean her _Match?_ ” He takes great care to put emphasis on the word. Both his parents wince at it. Good. “Yeah, I think they’re really happy together. Might even buy an apartment together, when Amanda’s not traveling with her guy friends.”

“These male friends of hers…” his father shakes his head. “Seems… potentially vulgar. Or dangerous. What would people think?”

“I know these men,” Dirk interjects. “We haven’t always gotten along, but each and every one of them has nothing but honorable intentions towards her, and would die before they’d let anyone hurt her.”

“And hopefully what people would think,” Todd adds. “Is that she’s quite happy with the arrangement she’s got going on right now.”

The air is tense enough that even Dirk, who can be quite good at figuring situations out sometimes but also sometimes has the ability of a table to read a room, swiftly asks a question.

“So, Todd tells me that you aren’t Matched.”

“We aren’t,” his mother confirms. 

“We’ve had a few clients who weren’t Matched.”

“Yes, it’s actually more common than people in schools and such would have you believe.”

“Especially in high school Health classes,” Todd mutters. His teacher had been very into “don’t have sex with anyone but your Match” kind of practices. Todd hadn’t liked his parents at that point, but he’d been irritated at the approach, so he’d loudly asked what advice he would have had for his parents, who weren’t Matched but together anyway, only he thought they’d want to know, and he thought he’d pass it on to them. He’d gotten detention pretty quickly.

“We’re very happy together,” his father continues like Todd hadn’t spoken, which is pretty par for the course. “We’ve met other Unmatched couples, and they’re just as happy. The Match system is nice for those it works for, but sometimes for others, there’s another option.”

“And you never worry that you’ll find your Match?”

Both shrug.

“If they show up, it doesn’t really matter,” his mother says. “People can fall in love with each other without what shows up on their arm to be necessary to that process.”

“We told each of our Matches that we’d fallen in love with other people,” his father says. “They didn’t take it very well at first, but then they grew to understand. I got a message from mine saying she’d found love with someone else.”

“I never heard from mine. But I wish them the best.”

Dirk nods thoughtfully. The check arrives not long after. Dirk goes to the bathroom, and Todd waits for him by the entrance to the restaurant with his parents.

“Dear,” his mother says after a moment. “Dirk seems a bit… eccentric.”

Todd recognizes the tone that always went hand in hand with the word “eccentric” when one of his parents used it. He takes a deep breath. “Yes, he is.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to work with someone a little more… normal?”

Two limits. Both have now been hit. “No, I don’t.”

“But-“

“But nothing. Dirk’s my partner and he’s my best friend. I like working with him. When we’re trying to figure out a case, I feel more like a human being than I have in years. Maybe in my whole life. I like hanging out with him. I like who I am when I’m around him. I like who _he_ is.” _I want to be around him the way you two want to be around each other_ , he wants to say suddenly. _I want to be around him the way Amanda wants to be around Farah._ “He’s eccentric,” he says instead. “And he’s not normal. And neither am I, so it fits exactly like it should.”

His mother purses her lips. His father opens his mouth to say something, but Dirk suddenly appears at his shoulder and they break into charming smiles. As always, image.

“So wonderful to meet you,” his mother says as Dirk shakes both their hands.

“I certainly enjoyed our lunch,” Dirk answers. Todd wonders if his parents can hear the avoidance of returning the sentiment and suppresses a smile as his father shakes his hand too and his mother hugs him.

“We should do this again sometime!”

It’s a platitude. It always is. “We should.”

They say their goodbyes. The two of them don’t talk again until they’re on the bus, Todd trying to only intermittently take deep breaths so Dirk doesn’t notice that he’s trying to get rid of the feeling of his parents on his skin.

“So.” Dirk’s voice is matter of fact. “I know what you did was to them was terrible, and I’m not excusing it away, but I think we can say that your parents are, objectively, awful.”

Todd snorts and uses as an excuse to take a very long breath. “Yeah. That’s. Yeah.”

“It’s impressive how you and Amanda turned out, considering them.”

“Amanda was the closest person in my life before college. I didn’t want… when I was ten, they told me they were having a baby. And I was confused because they didn’t really seem to like having one kid, so I didn’t really see why they’d want another one. I think it was probably an attempt at a reset. Get the one they wanted to make up for the one they didn’t. And then when I was about seventeen, I could see them turning away from her the way they’d turned from me and I didn’t want that, so I made sure she could come to me. So I just… I tried to take care of her as best I could.”

“That’s very good of you.”

Todd turns his head to stare out the windshield as best he can from the seat. “Yeah, well, and then I lied to her from when I was twenty-two to a year and a half ago, so I wasn’t that great at it.”

Dirk doesn’t have an answer to that. Todd inclines his head slightly in his direction.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“Do what?” He sounds sincerely confused.

“That. The, the thing you said, about me in the agency.” He slides his eyes to Dirk, who’s now frowning.

“I have seen you actually backed into a corner by people usually with guns, and I have _never_ seen you look as cornered as you did at that restaurant.”

Todd twitches a little. “Yeah, that happens sometimes.”

“They said you should do something that would meet low expectations.”

“Essentially, yeah, but that’s what they do.”

“Well, they _shouldn’t._ ”

“Shouldn’t doesn’t enter into it.”

“Yes, it does.” Dirk sounds frustrated. “It _does_ enter into it. They don’t get to say those things about you, and everything I said was completely and utterly true, and quite frankly, I’m not going to sit there and listen to people passive aggressively shit on you, or even aggressively shit on you.”

Todd swears to God he’s not naturally a blusher. He’s _not._ It just… seems to be happening a lot more now. He knows he’s not going to be able to hide his smile, so he just tries to make it a smaller one because if he doesn’t, it may get goofy. “I’m a partner in the agency now?”

Dirk shrugs, over exaggerating the carelessness. “I was _going_ to tell you, but then you annoyed me that day and I just forgot.”

“Do I get better pay?”

“Nope.”

“How about my name in the agency title?”

“ _Certainly_ not.”

“So what’s the benefits, then?”

“You get to tell people that you’re a partner in a detective agency and they’re all very impressed.”

“I feel like the holistic part cancels that out, though.”

Dirk sniffs. “That’s very rude of you and additionally their loss.”

Todd grins down at the floor of the bus.

“Besides.” His voice is still casual. “You’re eccentric and not quite normal. They’ll _expect_ the holistic.”

Oh _shit._ Todd stiffens. “I didn’t know you heard that,” he says, staring determinedly at the gum stuck to the bus floor.

“Of course you didn’t. It circles back to the bad with feelings thing we were discussing earlier.”

Todd sneaks a look at Dirk. He’s looking at Todd affectionately. It gives him the courage he needs.

“I meant it, too,” he says. “Every word.”

Todd’s relieved that Dirk flushes, too. At least he’s not the only dweeb who can’t handle emotional shit here.

“Did you really work at Men’s Wearhouse?” Dirk asks, changing the subject. Todd leans back against his seat.

“Yeah, I did, for about six months. It wasn’t my kind of place.”

Dirk nods, cheeks still pink from before, face a little musing but mostly inscrutable.

“What?”

“I’m trying to picture you in a suit.”

“You _do_ remember that when we met, I was wearing a bellhop uniform that was suitlike, right?”

“Yes, and you looked _terrible_ , just patently ridiculous, so I’m hoping that you looked better in the suit than in that.”

Todd laughs. The imprint his parents always leave on him for a while after seeing them is nearly gone. “Wow, thanks.”

“What was that hat even all about?”

“I don’t know, taking away our self-esteem bit by bit and destroying us as people? Hang on, you never saw me wearing the hat.”

“No, but I saw it on Bart, and it didn’t work for her, either.”

“I’m much better looking than Bart, though.”

Dirk’s eye twitches and he looks at the ceiling. “You’re all right, I suppose.”

Todd huffs out another laugh. “Thanks, Dirk, much appreciated.”

“You’re welcome.”

Todd tugs the string for their stop, and the two of them walk back to the Ridgely.

“They seem pretty happy with each other, though,” Dirk observes thoughtfully. “I mean, they’re still of course awful people, and I thoroughly hate them, but they’re Unmatched and happy.”

“Yeah, I hate to say it, but they’re probably where I inherited my mindset about Matches from.”

“Which is?” Dirk sounds curious. Todd’s not surprised. They’ve never talked about Matches in depth before.

“I mean, look, it works for some people, Amanda and Farah were writing each other for years, but. You don’t fall in love with someone because they leave words on your arm sometimes. People fall in love with people.”

Dirk nods. “I see.”

“Is that a real ‘I see’ or is that a fake ‘I see’?”

Dirk’s expression becomes lofty. “There is no fake ‘I see’s. _All_ my ‘I see’s are real.”

Todd laughs as they walk up the stairs to the Ridgely. “That’s bullshit, but okay.”

“Nonsense.”

They banter all the way up to Todd’s apartment, at which point Dirk goes back up to his apartment. Todd makes some ramen noodles: he hadn’t been very hungry at the lunch. Once he finishes, he lies on his bed while sitting up and checking his phone. His arm tingles and he looks down at it.

_I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid that I’ve fallen in love with someone else._

 

Todd doesn’t care about Matches. This isn’t even a determined self delusion. He genuinely doesn’t care.

But.

There’s something rattling about finding out even his Match doesn’t want him. His parents made the right decision, he knows this; you should be with who you love. His Match is making the right decision, too.

It’s just.

It’s hard.

He spends a lot of time in his head over the next couple days.

“So what can I do to help?” Dirk asks around day three. Todd blinks up at him.

“Sorry?”

“There’s clearly something wrong. I’m not sure what’s going on, but you seem rather sad all the time, and I would like to avoid your distress as much as possible. Is it because of your parents? It seems to have started after that.”

“It’s. Yeah, in a way, I guess, I just.” Todd rubs his forehead. “It’s really complicated.”

“All right, then. You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, if you don’t want.”

Todd’s surprised. “Really?”

“Of course, why not?”

“I just, I told you that you were my person to talk to about everything, and I meant it, but-“

“And it’s very good of you, and sweet, and it means quite a lot to me, but that doesn’t mean you _have_ to. We’re different people. You’re allowed to have your things and I’m allowed to have mine.”

Sometimes Dirk says wildly ridiculous things, ones that make no sense, ones terribly awkward. But just as equally sometimes, he comes out of left field with things that are perfect. Todd really hopes his gaze isn’t as adoring as he’s feeling it might be. It probably is. He’s had to accept that when it comes to Dirk, he is permanently unsubtle. He’s just lucky that Dirk never notices. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

 

Over the next couple days, there’s always a coffee from his favorite cafe sitting on his desk, the one that’s just too expensive for him to go to except as a special treat sometimes. Sometimes there’s a danish. Todd knows who’s doing it because it’s so obvious even if he’s not talking about it, and his heart swells every time he sees them.

They start working a case for a married couple not quite elderly, but getting there. One of the two, a woman with only strands of black hair left in her white hair called Agnes, comes to the agency early in the morning, before normally their hours would start, but Todd gets there early so he can talk to her about the case. Dirk’s not there yet.

She details the things he needs to know. He’s scribbling it down when she says “oh, my wife and I are Unmatched, if that matters.”

Todd pauses his writing.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Her voice is suddenly steely.

“No! No, my parents are Unmatched.”

“Oh, thank goodness. You wouldn’t _believe_ the things I’ve had to hear from people. Although, perhaps you would.”

Todd pulls up a smile, but the woman, Agnes, has suddenly shrewd eyes.

“There’s something more.”

Todd hesitates. He shouldn’t discuss this with a client. But she doesn’t really know Dirk, and he doesn’t want to discuss this with anyone who _does_ know him, just because… circumstances. She’s unlikely to say anything. And he needs to tell _someone._

“My Match just wrote me that they’ve fallen in love with someone else,” he says slowly. “And I really don’t care about the Match system, but it’s just… hard. It’s hard.”

“The same thing happened to my wife.”

“How did she deal with it?”

“Well, like you said, it was hard. By that point, we were friends, but she hadn’t told me she loved me yet. She knew she had me, but she was still having a rough time. Eventually, I made her feel better, and she worked through it on her own. I’m sorry you don’t have that, it must be terribly difficult.”

Dirk breezes in, holding his cardboardesque travel mug that they give at cafes and a paper bag. He blinks at the sight of Agnes.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Saito. I didn’t know you were coming in.”

“I told you,” Todd points out.

“No, you didn’t. I think perhaps you started to, but then you got disoriented by losing a race in your game with the red hatted man and the tiny mushroom headed man who looks nothing like a toad.”

“You _know_ it’s called Mariokart, don’t f-“ he catches himself. Gotta stop cursing in front of clients. “Mess with me just because you can.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dirk grabs Todd’s wrist and puts the coffee in his open hand. “This is hot chocolate this time, because I had it yesterday from them and it is _fantastic_ , it is _impossible_ to be sad while drinking it, you _have_ to try it. The other thing is a croissant with caramel and sea salt chocolate in it. I think you like sea salt, if memory serves. I have to go call your sister, I saw a salamander on the way here.”

Todd’s not sure what that means, but he watches him go into the other room and closing the door, he knows, so Dirk won’t disturb the two of them on actual work business fondly nonetheless.

He returns his attention to Agnes, whose gaze is still sharp.

“My mistake,” she says. “Perhaps you _do_ have that.”

Todd flushes. “I, um.” Fuck. He really _is_ obvious to everybody but Dirk. Fuck. Panic wells in his throat, clouding his reasoning. “You can’t tell him. And you can’t say anything about my Match, either. He doesn’t know any of it. He’s respectful of not asking why I’m sad.” Gotta cover his tracks.

“Don’t worry. I remember what this was like. I’m glad you have someone who wants to steer you through it, even if he doesn’t understand it himself.”

Todd hears his voice getting louder even through the door. “You should have _seen_ it, Amanda, it was black and red, and somehow the combination was vaguely terrifying, I couldn’t look at it but I couldn’t look away, it was _fascinating_ , you should probably avoid it if you see it in your travels, though I’m not entirely sure where you are at this point, are you with Farah or-“

Todd smiles. “Yeah. So am I.”

 

That afternoon when Todd gets home and Dirk goes upstairs to change into more comfortable clothes than his suit, Todd pulls off his plaid shirt and grabs a pen. He scrawls it, wanting to do it before Dirk comes back, hastily tugging the shirt back on before he hears the key in the lock.

_Don’t worry about it. Me, too._

 

Todd doesn’t get a lot on his arm after that. Occasional grocery reminders, mostly. He’s glad. The vulnerable thoughts that would come in the middle of the night sometimes have clearly found someone else to be shared with, someone who is probably better at knowing how to handle them, and for that he’s happy.

He’s not sure what to do about Dirk yet, to be honest. He thinks he should probably talk to him about all of it, all this feelings stuff. But he wants to do it right. Needs to figure out how to say it.

And also he’s a little scared that Dirk won’t feel the same, and things’ll get awkward, and that’ll be the end of that. He doesn’t know what Dirk’s relationship with his Match is, either. He never talks about them, and Todd never sees him writing on his arm, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. Doesn’t talk to them. Doesn’t love them.

And it doesn’t matter, really, because ultimately, Todd would be terrible for him anyway, he wouldn’t be a good person to have in any relationship, and _especially_ not one with Dirk, because then he’d be hurting the most important person he knows, and that’s an unacceptable outcome.

So yeah.

Not sure.

Sue him.

 

It’s another late night for them, Todd reading a book about exotic chickens that seems to be necessary for the case, Dirk going over some papers. Todd starts absently singing under his breath, just for something to do.

There’s a clattering and a crashing sound. Todd looks up to see Dirk sitting on the floor by his chair, file on the ground and papers a little scattered, staring at him, face pale.

“Did you fall out of your chair?” Todd asks.

“Yes.”

“Did you… I don’t understand, was there _flailing_ involved or did you just sort of _decide_ -“

“What was that you were singing?”

“I don’t know, uh-“ he thinks about it, trying to remember what had been done really to start him singing. “It was a Mexican Funeral song.” Dirk’s eyes get bigger. “Why?”

“I _know_ that song.”

“What?”

“I thought it was _poetry_ , I…” he looks a little dazed. “I _know_ it.”

“How?”

“It was.” Dirk’s started rubbing his arm. “It was on my _arm._ ”

Todd’s stomach drops. “Your _arm?_ Your Match knew who we were?”

“It wasn’t… that song, it wasn’t _quite_ the same, there were some words that were different, they, they got scratched out, like they were in the process of being-“

“Written.” Todd’s chest is thumping wildly. “It has to be one of them.”

“One of your bandmates.” Dirk scrambles to his feet. “Can we- do we look them up, I don’t-“

Todd pulls out his laptop. He wants to throw up a little at this so swift it’s almost sickening reminder that Dirk’s not his, that Dirk’s going to want somebody else, but if this is what’s going to make him happy, than Todd will search and smile and do whatever he needs. “We’ll check Facebook.”

Jodi is obviously out. Jamie’s dating a girl out in Colorado. Ricky got married a couple years ago, has a baby boy and it looks like another one on the way. It aches a little seeing them, but mostly he’s just glad they’re happy. 

“We didn’t always hammer out the lyrics perfectly before shows,” Todd says, trying to think, Dirk hovering over his shoulder and looking at the screen. “So it could have been people who saw our early shows, I guess. I didn’t think anyone liked us that much.”

“ _Somebody_ must have.” Dirk straightens, hand going through his hair. “Song lyrics, I always thought it was _poetry_ , and certainly he wasn’t going to see anything, he wasn’t exactly a _talker_.” He starts pacing a little. “I want to meet him. Should I meet him? I mean, we don’t really talk anymore, we had a talk about a month ago, ish, talk-ish, but this is _such_ a coincidence, we can’t _possibly_ ignore it-“

Dirk keeps babbling, getting up and pacing around the room, but Todd can’t hear him over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears.

Because he remembers suddenly, being back in college, writing those songs, hashing some of them out on his arm, and his Match writing back something about how they thought they were nice. Said they thought they were poems.

He remembers when his Match vanished for a little while as a kid. Thinking back, that would be about the time frame for the first Blackwing, wouldn’t it? The message he’d gotten then, the _I don’t want to do this anymore_ somewhere in the middle of all that, that would fit too. So would all the other exhausted messages he’d gotten after, when they came back. A very Dirk thing to do, too, talk about random little details for he didn’t have to focus on the big things. He remembers when they got to Seattle, and he met Dirk the same day. The conversation while Dirk would have been in the hospital and Todd would have been at home, uncertain about what to do about Dirk. Fuck, he didn’t hear from his Match _at all_ while they were looking for Blackwing, while Dirk would have been _in_ Blackwing. Not much of a talker. They’d had a talk, ish.

_I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid that I’ve fallen in love with someone else._

Fuck.

Fuck.

_Fuck._

There’s only one way to be sure. Dirk’s still talking and moving around the room, too wrapped up to notice how silent Todd is. Todd reaches out with a shaking hand and grabs a marker from the mug on the desk they keep them in. He takes a deep breath to try and steady himself, then carefully writes _stop freaking out_ on his arm.

“Hang on, hang on, I’m getting a message, I’m telling you, _far_ too coincidental, look, it says _stop freaking out_ , but _how_ does he know that I’m freaking out, do you think he’s holistic, too, or-“

Dirk stops talking. Stops moving from the sound of things, too. The room is suddenly very, very quiet. Todd’s frozen, still staring at the ink on his arm.

“Oh,” Dirk whispers.

Todd forces himself to move, slowly looking up. Dirk’s still holding his arm at a bit of an angle to make it easier to read, gaping at him. Todd can’t read his face. He doesn’t know what Dirk’s seeing in his. They stare at each other for a minute.

“I’m-“ Dirk’s voice cracks a little. “I’m just going to-“

He turns and flees out the door. Todd doesn’t blame him. It’s what his body’s screaming to do, too. Todd gradually lets his head drop until his forehead’s resting on the desk, arm still splayed out.

“Shit,” he mutters, and then again, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

He stays there for a little while before he finally stands up. He tugs his tee shirt off. Folds the white long sleeved shirt from underneath it and puts it on the desk. Pulls the shirt back on and heads for the door.

 

Todd climbs the stairs to the roof and emerges into the chilly night air. Dirk's sitting in the same spot they were in the last time they were up here, arms gathered around his legs, loosely drawn up, ankles crossed. Todd sits next to him, crossing his legs. 

They don't talk for a few minutes. Todd knows what they're dancing around, their last messages to each other hanging between them. 

Dirk looks at Todd, but not directly. Todd knows immediately why. He's been sneaking glances at Dirk's arm since he came up here, too, wondering what it looks like, when his scrawl appears on it, trying to see past the sleeves he’s rolled up to the elbow.

"If there's anything we're bad at," Dirk observes suddenly. "It's talking about things that involve feelings. We get a little stumbly about it. And if there's anything we're _abysmal_ at, it's being cornered into talking about things that involve feelings."

Todd snorts and gives a little nod of acknowledgement. 

“I didn’t know it was you until just now,” he says. “Not until you said the poetry thing the second time. That’s when I put it together. I haven’t been hiding this.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t think you were.”

Todd nods. So much for figuring out what to do. Time to just plow ahead. ”I suck at shit like this," he tells Dirk. "I always have. You know that. I'm not good at talking about emotions with people. I get angry when I don't understand something. I never know what I'm doing, ever. This couldn't..." Todd feels at a loss. "This couldn't end happily for you. And that's the last thing I'd ever want."

Dirk leans back a little, stretching his legs out, putting his upper body weight on his hands, flat against the roof.

"Well," he says matter of factly. "First of all, you get angry at _many_ things, not just the ones you don't get. You're a naturally angry person. And one of those things you get angry about, without fail, is when people are or have been unkind to me. And you are the first person to do so consistently in quite some time. So yes, you get mad at the things you don't understand, but you also get mad when it comes to bad things happening to me. And that means something, you know."

"That's not-“

"Secondly," Dirk continues, showing no sign of having heard him. "I never know what I'm doing, either. But I keep plowing forwards anyway, and so far it seems to be working. Not to mention that none of the people that we've met seem to be entirely confident in what they're doing, either, but they do all right. So really, that's a moot point, especially since that’s one of the messages we did exchange once, you helping me attain that viewpoint, so a bit of a useless thing to say, really.”

"Okay, but-"

"Thirdly, yes, you do suck at talking about emotions with people. And so do I, quite frankly, if I can avoid talking about what's going on up here then I will take that opportunity and happily run in the opposite direction. But you and I suck less at it when we talk about them to each other. We usually stagger onto the right thing in the end. So again, this doesn't really matter."

"Dirk-"

"Finally, you say that this couldn't end happily for me. And quite frankly, that's not your entire decision to make, is it? It's mine, too. And honestly, I completely disagree. Because I was, well, not _happy_ per se when I thought I was going to hang around you for the rest of my life pining and whatnot, because again, running in the opposite direction seemed like the best move at the time, but it was still being around you, so I was willing to live with that. I'm willing to give this a try if you are, and if you're not, I'll live with that, but don't let your self-loathing talk for you, because I'm not trying to talk to that at the moment, I'm trying to talk to _you_."

They're both quiet for a moment. 

"Did you anticipate I'd say something like that and rehearse your response?" Todd asks. "Because that seemed pretty put together for you."

Dirk sniffs. "I am frequently put together."

"But in this instance?"

"...in this instance I may have rehearsed some of it," he admits. 

Todd looks up at the sky, slowly starting to feel something like hope.

"Besides which," Dirk adds after a moment. "I tend to sprawl over a bed, which I'm fairly certain is an undesirable quality. So there’s that against you.”

"Oh, well." The feeling is growing, warm and certain. "I'm sure I'll manage.”

It’s a little chilly out. Todd changed into solely his tee shirt before heading up to find Dirk because it had felt metaphorical somehow, but he’s starting to think that maybe he should save symbolic gestures for warmer nights. Dirk had left his bright blue jacket behind when he’d fled the office, so he can’t imagine he’s doing any better.

“I was right, you know,” he tells him, a little musingly. “All this time.”

“Unusual, to be consistently right for such a long time.” Dirk doesn’t often tease when he could just give shit or banter, and he likes to do so in a way that makes it hard to tell. Todd’s pretty sure he is now, though. It’s making that thing inside him, the thing like hope and happiness, all the brighter. “What about?”

“The whole Match thing.”

“Oh, yes?”

“I mean, we talked about this a little. I’ve always been pretty… skeptical. Cause I think it’s kinda stupid, this whole idea, that we’re tied to someone just because they doodle on us, and that’s that, we’re supposed to just… fall for them, like that. And I guess sometimes it’s different, cause Farah and Amanda had been writing to each other for a while, and they knew each other pretty well, but sometimes it’s not, sometimes you’re just expected to be with them by virtue of the system. And sometimes, the system is _bullshit._ ”

“This is an unsurprisingly punk take from you.”

Todd rolls his eyes but keeps going. “I always thought people fell in love with people after they got to know them. I didn’t think you fell in love with people cause sometimes they leave signatures that aren’t yours behind. I still don’t. And I was right.” He smiles faintly up at the cloth of the night, spread out before them with twinkling diamonds scattered throughout. “I didn’t. I took the first route.”

Todd doesn’t look at Dirk in the silence that follows. He’s not sure he’s supposed to. Dirk will digest this, and then he will have some form of response. Right now, he doesn’t have a lot to do with it. Like Dirk said, this is both of theirs, and he’s done his part.

Dirk scoochs over until he’s sitting right next to Todd. His hand links up with Todd’s, their arms resting against each other’s. They don’t say anything. 

“What’s that one?” Dirk asks eventually, pointing at a star in particular with the hand not holding Todd’s. “Is that another planet or an actual star? I haven’t learned anything else about space since the last time.”

“Really? You seemed interested. I thought maybe you’d have looked some more stuff up by now.”

“I decided against it.” Dirk’s tone is back to matter of fact. “I was going to ask you more things, when I got the chance. I like hearing you talk about the things you like.”

Todd’s chest tightens. He joins his hand to aim at where Dirk’s indicating. “That’s Polaris. It always points north, stays in the same spot. It guides you when you need it to, or maybe just orients you. As long as you can find it, you know where you are and where you need to go.”

“Ah.” Dirk pulls his arm back. “Makes sense.”

Todd does the same, at a little bit of a loss at that one. “Yeah, I guess.”

“That you would be the one to tell me, I mean.” He’s even more confused, but Dirk continues. “Since you and I came together, no matter how lost I get, you guide me back. In every instance, really. It doesn’t matter what situation we’re in, or who’s pointing what weapon at us. Because of you, I know where I am. So I suppose it makes sense that you’d be the one to tell me about it, because as far as I’m concerned, you’re Polaris.”

Todd’s pretty sure his heart’s thumping too fast to be able to play this cool. Traitorous bastard. He swallows and clears his throat. “Your speech was smoother than mine,” he manages.

“What will become a running theme, I’m sure.”

Todd looks at Dirk. He’s still looking up at the Northern Star. The street lamps in the night have thrown them both into sharp shadows, but Todd can still tell he’s smiling.

“Not possible,” he says. “There’s no way you’re suaver than me.”

“Of course there is. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you’re not _remotely_ smooth. Amanda’s right, you know, you have no game.”

“Okay, I’m not sure when you’ve been talking to my sister about my game, first of all, and I’m pretty sure that’s weird.”

“I may have made some inquiries as to your dating habits once.”

“When?”

“During the Patrick Spring case when I got the chance.”

Todd grins. “Took no time, huh?”

“I think if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have seen that quite a lot of time’s been taken.”

Todd remembers the point he’d wanted to make in the first place. “And it’s not like you’re smooth, either. We’re both kind of trainwrecks.”

Dirk turns to him, opening his mouth to no doubt inform Todd about how he’s less of a trainwreck with examples as to Todd’s trainwreckiness being bigger than his. Part of the reason Todd pulls his hand out of Dirk’s so he can put both of them on either side of Dirk’s face and kiss him is to prevent this, but mostly because he wants to, has wanted to for a long time and thinks this means that he’s allowed to. Fuck, maybe that he’s been allowed to for a while, and they’re both just idiots. Dirk’s surprised enough that he’s still moving his mouth to talk for a moment when he kisses him, but he quickly get with the program, arms encircling Todd’s neck.

When Todd moves back a little reluctantly, Dirk’s eyes are still closed.

“Keep telling me random facts about space,” he murmurs. “I’ll find nice ways to spin them, if this is the end result.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the only possible one you get.”

Dirk opens his eyes. “I can try. Tell me something sexy about Mars.”

“I dunno if there _is_ anything. It’s very red?” He has better Mars facts than that. It’s just that Dirk’s got a hand in his hair and is looking at him like he’s the only thing that matters, so he’s forgetting them, is all.

Dirk considers it, tilting his head a little. “Nope,” he decides. “I don’t have anything for that.”

“I told you.”

“I’m going to kiss you again anyway, though. Start thinking about actually useful facts about the galaxy.”

“The galaxy isn’t _there_ to be usef-“ 

Dirk’s lips muffle his, seeming as determined to shut him up as Todd had been to him just a few moments ago, and he can’t help but smile, winding an arm around Dirk’s back to get him a little closer.

 

Todd abruptly wakes to the sound of _thwap thwap thwap thwap thwap_ and the feeling of tiny suction cups on his face. He yelps and flails a little in the blankets for a second before he settles. He reaches up to his face to feel Nerf darts sticking out of them. “What the fuck?” he mumbles. He rubs at his eyes to clear them a little and sees Dirk sitting cross legged in his pajamas on the edge of their bed, a Nerf gun next to him, beaming.

“What?” he asks again.

“Hang on-“ Dirk shoots him once more. “Six. That’s how many times you shot me. Now we’re even.”

“You-“ Todd’s still pulling himself together. He blinks. “You shot at me?”

“I _told_ you I’d get you back for that.”

“That was like six months ago.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been planning this for six months?”

“Also yes.”

Todd looks at the window. It’s open, the table underneath it carefully cleared off, the picture frame of Stela Cjelli moved to the bookshelf, Mary’s cat bed moved out of the way.

“Did you climb in here?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You fucking _live_ here.”

“And let me tell you, did _that_ make planning easier. Because first I was just planning while I was pining and it gave me something to do, and then we became A Thing, and then I moved in, and that made it a _lot_ easier to case the joint, because I was in here all the time anyway but now I got to wake up here and observe the best places to move stuff out of the way and climb in and such.”

Todd’s starting to smile. “Case the joint?”

“It seemed like appropriate caper language.”

“You broke into your own apartment.”

“Yes, and like I said, it took some planning, so I’m counting it as a caper, which is exciting, because I’ve never done one before.”

He’s still beaming, looking very pleased with himself. It is an absurd move on Dirk’s part. Simultaneously very ridiculous and very devious, and Todd can’t help but grin back while he pulls the darts off.

“You’re an idiot,” he says, pushing himself forwards so Dirk catches him halfway and kissing him.

“And you,” Dirk says when he pulls back, one hand flat on Todd’s back to keep him close. “Are very, very weird.”

“Shut up. It’s one of the great trials of my life that I find you adorable.”

Dirk runs his thumb against his back. “My heart bleeds for you.” He’s smiling faintly and looking at Todd fondly, like he’s the strangest but most wonderful thing he’s ever seen. Todd stares at Dirk for long enough that he raises his eyebrows at him. “What?”

“I was thinking about doing something sappy and I’ve decided to go for it, so fair warning.”

“Are you dying? Should I be concerned?”

“Don’t be an asshole, or I’m gonna change my mind.” Todd leans back and rummages around in the nightstand drawer until he finds what he’s looking for. He pulls the cap of the marker off with his teeth and quickly scrawls what he was thinking before he loses his nerve, and he waits for Dirk to see it.

“You’re right,” Dirk says after a moment. His voice is a little choked up. “That’s pretty sappy.”

“I told you.”

He feels the bed dip until Dirk’s pressed up against his back, putting an arm around Todd. He angles it so their arm match, the _?x2_ in Todd’s handwriting on the inside of their elbows.

“I didn’t know if you remembered that conversation.” Todd’s not really looking at his face. Emotions have been easier, but can still be weird, and he’s still feeling a little nervous. “About the question marks.”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever told that to.” Dirk rests his chin on his shoulder. “Of course I remember.”

“Well. You’ve got someone to share the question marks with now.”

Dirk kisses his cheek. “I’d noticed.” He slides an arm around his upper chest and pulls him close. “I wouldn’t want any other someone.”

Todd smiles, the nervousness dissipating. “You better not have stepped on our cat on your way in here.”

“Oh, she's just sulking somewhere because I moved her bed, we’d know if I stepped on her.”

Todd angles his head into Dirk’s a little. “I’m glad you’re that someone, too,” he whispers. He feels Dirk smile against him.

Pretty soon, they’ll have to get up. Todd’s going to have to convince Mary to come out of wherever she’s hiding so he can feed her while Dirk makes them coffee. They’ll have to put real clothes on and go to the agency, and they’ll work on a case that may or may not result in people pointing weapons on them. They’ve had a string of long days, so they’ll probably end up staggering home late and eating leftover food before passing out, possibly all weekend.

It’s going to be a good day.

For now, the two of them sit in comfortable quiet, breathing steadily in the morning stillness that for once doesn’t feel quite so evil. Todd can feel Dirk’s heartbeat. He leans back a little further. Dirk’s arms tighten. For now, it’s a good morning.

“If I fall asleep on you, elbow me in the gut,” Dirk mumbles. “Not too hard, though, cause I like my gut non-bruised the way it is.”

Todd reaches up to hold onto his arms, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> When I started this fic, I had genuine concerns about hitting the minimum word count. I just want y'all to know that.
> 
> My artist for this fic was the lovely sarkywoman! [They look so good!!! I love everything about them!!! Ahhhhh!!!](https://sarkywoman.tumblr.com/post/164658817684/written-for-cosmicoceanfics-story-the-destiny)
> 
> [Zhivchik on tumblr did this incredible graphic set for this fic! Go check it out!](http://zhivchik.tumblr.com/post/167376631851/the-quote-from-the-destiny-of-human-handwriting-by)


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